Contract Bridge

Queen of diamonds

Assume South is declarer at six hearts and West leads the queen of diamonds. How should he play the hand? The actual declarer won the diamond lead with the ace, drew two rounds of trumps, cashed the A-K of spades and ruffed a spade. He then cashed the king of diamonds, led a trump to the king and ruffed dummy’s last spade. South now exited with the nine of diamonds, hoping West would have to win the trick and return a club. This method of play might well have succeeded, but unfortunately West had very shrewdly disposed of his jack of diamonds on the second diamond lead. As a result, East won the nine with the ten and returned a club, and declarer went down one. South’s plan was good, but not good enough. He pursued the right idea in stripping the dummy of spades so that he could later try to put West on lead with a diamond and thus avoid a club finesse. His execution, though, left something to be desired. South gave the show away when he started ruffing dummy’s spades. He made it too easy for West to see that an endplay was in the offing if he retained the jack of diamonds. The best play is to win the opening diamond lead with the king and cash the ace at trick two. West would have to be extremely farsighted to play his jack at this point, and if he makes the normal play of the four at trick two, declarer winds up making the slam as described above. As in many similar hands, the key play by declarer should be made before the opponents have any notion of what is going on. In the actual case, it would be almost impossible for West to know at trick two that the critical point of the play had already been reached.