Contract Bridge

A stitch in time

A defender should always think in terms of how many tricks his side needs to set the contract. This becomes his goal for that hand, and if he absent-mindedly loses sight of it, disaster might soon follow. Consider this deal where West led a spade against four hearts. Dummy’s king took the trick, and declarer led a low trump to his hand, to which East followed low.

South won with the queen and cashed the ace of spades, discarding a diamond from dummy. He then conceded a trump to East’s ace, but the defenders could no longer collect more than a diamond and a club, so declarer made the contract. It is easy to see that if East had gone up with his ace on the first heart lead from dummy and returned a diamond, South would have gone down one. The question, therefore, is whether East should have made this play without having seen all four hands.

The answer lies in the principle set forth above. As soon as dummy appears, East should ask himself how and where his side might get the four tricks needed to defeat the contract. He can reasonably count on a club trick and a trump trick, but his only real chance of stopping the contract lies in the hope that his partner can score two diamond tricks. The trouble with playing low on the first heart lead is that it allows declarer to get to his hand and discard a diamond from dummy on the ace of spades (South is marked with the spade ace, since West would not underlead an ace at trick one.) East should therefore rise with the heart ace at trick two and shift to a diamond as the one and only chance to set the contract. In doing so, he abandons the usual practice of “second hand low” because the circumstances indicate that in this case it is the wrong thing to do. (c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.