Contract Bridge

South finds the winning recipe

Adequate transportation from one hand to the other plays a critical role in declarer's management of his assets. In the same way, it is just as important for the defenders to maintain communication with each other's hands. It follows that anything that can be done to interfere with the other side's means of communication is all to the good.

Consider the present deal where West leads a club against South's three-notrump contract. Declarer has seven ready-made tricks, and his only chance for two more lies in hearts.

South must therefore try to arrange his plays so as to lead hearts twice toward dummy in order to establish his eighth and ninth tricks. At the same time, however, he must keep a sharp eye peeled for what the defenders are doing.

Thus, if South wins East's jack of clubs with the ace, he will finish behind the well-known eight ball after East wins the jack of hearts with the king and returns a club. West's clubs become established before dummy's hearts, and East-West wind up scoring three clubs and two hearts to defeat the contract.

Declarer can avoid this outcome by allowing East's jack to win the first club trick. If East continues the suit, West's clubs drop out of the picture. Even though he may later establish them, he will have no entry to cash them.

East cannot overcome this difficulty by shifting to a diamond at trick two. In that case, declarer simply ducks as before, after which East cannot both establish and run his diamond suit.

In effect, it takes two good ducks to cook East's goose!