Contract Bridge

This deal occurred in a match between Austria and

Italy at the world championship held in Monte Carlo in 1976. It was played at 44 tables, and 23 times South got to six hearts, a dreadful contract that had about a 20 percent chance of making. However, thanks to a fortunate lie of the opposing trumps, the slam was successfully negotiated by 22 of the 23 declarers.

The opening lead was usually a diamond, a club or a spade. Against any of these leads, declarer’s only real chance was to take a first-round trump finesse — leading low to the queen — and next play the ace, hoping to find East with precisely the doubleton king. The 22 lucky declarers found this to be the actual case and, as a result, scored 1,430 points.

The Austrian declarer was the only one who failed to make the slam. At his table, Italian star Benito Garozzo chose the diabolical opening lead of the nine of trump! Declarer, in an effort to guard against the possibility that East might have the K-J-6 of trump, covered the nine with the ten and won East’s king with the ace.

Declarer then led a diamond to the queen, returned a trump and, when East produced the six, found himself faced with a harrowing guess. He had to decide whether Garozzo’s opening lead of the trump nine was from the J-9, which would be an unusual lead against a slam, or whether Garozzo’s lead of the trump nine was a singleton, also an unusual lead against a slam.

With nothing to go on, the Austrian declarer elected to finesse the eight and so went down one. Ironically, the slam was easy to make without a trump lead, but once the trump was led, declarer had a chance to go wrong — and did.