Contract Bridge

Famous hand

Many years ago, B. Jay Becker played in a team-of-four match and held the South hand. His leap to four spades was doubled by East, and there Becker played the hand.

West led the six of hearts, and East took the ace and returned a heart. Becker finessed the jack, led a spade to the ace, ruffed a club, cashed the king of spades and conceded a spade and a diamond to make four spades doubled.

There seemed to be nothing unusual about the bidding or play, so he thought the outcome might well be duplicated at the other table and produce a tied board. He was mistaken, however, even though the final contract was exactly the same.

At that table, after the identical auction, West also led the six of hearts. But here, East, Peter Leventritt, made the magnificent play of the queen of hearts on the first trick instead of taking the ace. Leventritt reasoned that the six was either a singleton or a doubleton, or possibly a low-card lead from three to the king or jack, but that in all these cases his queen play could do no harm and might do some good.

His judgment was vindicated when South took the queen with the king and led a spade to the ace. Declarer could now do no better than lead a heart from dummy. Leventritt rose with the ace and returned the ten — a suit-preference signal asking for a diamond return — and West ruffed. West led a diamond to Leventritt’s ace, and another heart promoted West’s queen of spades as the setting trick.

It will be noted that if West had returned a club after ruffing the third round of hearts, South would have made the contract. Why Leventritt, looking at the same number of diamonds and clubs between his own hand and dummy, chose to ask his partner to return a diamond rather than a club is not known. About all that can be said is that after having made such a fine play on the first trick, it would not have served the interest of justice for him to have misguessed what to do later on.