Contract Bridge

King of clubs

Good defense is mostly a matter of visualizing declarer’s hand and utilizing this knowledge to obtain the best possible result.

Consider this deal where West leads the king of clubs, on which East plays the queen. It is widely accepted that the play of the queen under partner’s king at trick one signifies a singleton or possession of the jack.

West therefore returns a low club at trick two, confident that East will either ruff or play the jack.

After East wins the trick, he is faced with the crucial problem of what to play next. But there are many clues to guide him to the proper return. Most of these clues come from the bidding.

East knows that West must have five clubs for his overcall, which means that South has no more clubs. He likewise knows that South bid diamonds before he bid spades, giving South a 4-2-5-2 or 4-3-4-2 distribution. (If South had only one heart, West would have had five hearts and almost surely would have overcalled with one heart rather than two clubs.) So, by putting all of these inferences together, East concludes that a club continuation would be futile and that a heart shift might be critical.

He therefore returns the deuce of hearts at trick three. The shift strikes pay dirt when West scores the A-Q of hearts to put the contract down one. Actually, after taking the king of hearts with the ace, West might have a problem deciding whether to try to cash the queen of hearts or the ace of clubs, but this is an easy problem to solve.

East’s lead of the deuce of hearts (fourth-best) indicates that he cannot have more than four cards in the suit, so South must have started with at least two hearts.

West therefore plays the queen and defeats the contract. Observe that without this precise defense, declarer would end up making four spades.