Contract Bridge

Famous hands

This deal was played many years ago by Guglielmo Siniscalco, a member of the Italian Blue

Team that dominated world bridge in the 1950s and ’60s.

Siniscalco was South and got to five diamonds as shown. There would have been no problem had he been able to run five clubs after drawing trumps. But he realized that if West actually had a singleton club, which seemed likely from his lead, the suit was internally blocked. Regardless of the order in which he played the clubs, he would inevitably end up in his hand on the fourth round of the suit.

This in turn raised the prospect of losing three spade tricks, and, as can be seen from the diagram, that is exactly what would have happened. Nevertheless, Siniscalco found an elegant solution to the problem.

He won the club lead with dummy’s ace and led the jack of hearts, covered by East with the queen. Siniscalco ruffed with the nine, led the six of trumps to the eight and then played dummy’s ten of hearts.

When East covered with the king, declarer ruffed, crossed to the queen of diamonds and led the heart eight. This time East was unable to cover, whereupon Siniscalco discarded the eight of clubs!

West took the trick with his nine but could not stop declarer from making the contract. With the clubs now untangled, Siniscalco could ruff West’s probable heart return, draw the missing trump, cash the Q-K of clubs and then discard two spades on dummy’s 5-4 of clubs to finish with 11 tricks.

Note that if East had elected to play low on either the jack or ten of hearts when they were led from dummy, declarer would have discarded a club then and there. With West on lead, no harm could come to South at any stage, and 11 tricks thus became a virtual certainty.