Contract Bridge

A Sure Thing

Anyone who has played bridge for any length of time has had the unhappy experience as declarer of seeing an apparently certain contract disintegrate right in front of his eyes. Usually, the cause is freakish distribution of the opposing cards, in which case declarer is probably not to blame. But when declarer himself is responsible for turning a sure thing into a losing proposition, that’s another story.

Take this case where West led a heart against South’s three-notrump contract. Declarer put up dummy’s queen, which held, and then set about establishing the club suit. However, East declined to cooperate, refusing to take his ace on either the first or second round.

This left declarer with no recourse. He could go ahead and establish the clubs by playing a third round, but there would then be no way to reach the dummy. In practice, he turned his attention to spades and wound up down one, scoring two tricks each suit.

Considering that South had a sure thing going from the opening bell, it is difficult to muster any sympathy for him. The plain fact is that after the opening heart lead, nine tricks were there for the taking.

Declarer’s error came when he played the queen of hearts from dummy at trick one, a momentary victory that eventually cost him the contract. Instead, he should have played dummy’s deuce and taken whatever card East produced with the ace. This would have assured a later entry to dummy with either the queen or jack of hearts.

In the actual deal, after taking East’s nine (or six) with the ace, declarer plays three rounds of clubs. East can then return a heart or shift to another suit, as he likes, but nothing can stop South from scoring a spade, two hearts, two diamonds and four clubs for his contract.