Contract Bridge

The pursuit of excellence

Assume you get to six clubs on the bidding shown and West leads a heart. Common sense tells you the slam is in danger because East overcalled with two hearts and there is a very good chance the bid was based on a six-card suit. If so, West’s lead is a singleton, raising the possibility he may be able to ruff a heart if you lead a trump at trick two.

So you naturally start wondering what can be done about this threat. After you stew a while, you come up with what looks like a promising solution.

You win the heart with the king, cash the ace of spades and lead a diamond to the king. Your plan is to discard the 7-4 of hearts on the K-Q of spades and then lead a trump.

You do get to discard one heart on the spade king, but when you next lead the queen, it turns out that East has no more spades. However, this does you no harm at all, since East has the singleton ace of clubs. Whatever East does — whether he ruffs with the ace or discards on the spade queen — you dispose of your last heart. Either way, you make the slam.

While East’s holding the singleton club ace may appear to be a stroke of good luck, the fact is that this method of play would succeed even if East had the A-x or A-x-x of clubs. In either case, after East ruffed low, you would overruff and simply concede a club to the ace to make the slam. You’d lose a trump trick but nothing else.

Note that if you had incorrectly led a trump at trick two, which many declarers might do, it would have cost you the slam. These declarers would no doubt be hoping that East had overcalled on only a five-card suit, or that West was dealt only one trump. Those who adopted this line of play would have had to pay a heavy price on the actual deal for having failed to take the maximum precautionary measures.