Bridge By Phillip Alder

THE SECOND POINT ON A DECEPTIVE DEAL

Sun Tzu is believed to have lived from 544 to 496 B.C. In some areas, his “The Art of War” still influences not only warfare but also competitive endeavors including business, culture, politics and sports. Sun Tzu wrote, “A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”

This deal was used in yesterday’s column. Then, South made six spades after taking a safety play in trumps by running dummy’s four.

Can you see any way for a defender to distract declarer to his detriment?

In the auction, North’s four diamonds was a splinter bid. It showed four or more spades, at least game-going values and a singleton or void in diamonds. Then South, confident that his partner had strength in clubs, used 1430 Roman Key Card Blackwood. He learned that his partner had one key card (an ace or the spade king), then slightly optimistically jumped to six spades.

West, who disliked leading from a jack, chose the club seven to dummy’s king. What might have happened next?

Here was East’s chance to deceive declarer. If he had smoothly played the club queen under dummy’s king, what would South have thought?

Surely he would have assumed it was a singleton; and if it were, next running the spade four would have been risky. If West could have taken that trick with a singleton honor, he could have given his partner a club ruff. So declarer was highly likely to play a spade to his ace and go down.

Sneaky and clever.