Contract Bridge

An ounce of prevention

Assume you’re in four spades and West leads the jack of diamonds, which wins, and then the ten of diamonds, on which East plays the king. How would you play the hand?

There seems to be nothing to the play, so let’s say that you ruff the diamond and start drawing trump. You get a rude jolt when East shows out on the second round, and you now realize that the contract is irretrievably lost.

At this point, West has one trump more than you have — which he is bound to score — and you also have to lose two heart tricks, so you’re sure to go down at least one whatever you do.

This is very unlucky, you might think to yourself — after all, a 5-1 division occurs only 15 percent of the time. Nevertheless, you must assume a full portion of the blame.

There was a simple and uncomplicated way to make the contract, and it was virtually certain to succeed. Instead of ruffing the diamond lead at trick two, it would have been wiser to discard a heart, which is a loser in any case.

If diamonds were then continued at trick three, you’d once more discard a heart in order to guard against a possible 5-1 trump division. While such a division is certainly not what you’d ordinarily expect, it costs you nothing to try to protect against it. It can’t be right to run even a small risk when the risk can be avoided altogether.

By adopting the suggested method of play — which means deliberately conceding the first three tricks to the opponents — you raise your chances of winning the next 10 to nearly 99%. (c)2020 King Features Syndicate Inc.