BRIDGE

Some superior lines of play are guaranteed to (unintentionally) make the defenders dizzy as declarer goes back and forth in his best effort to establish the tricks he needs.

When dummy arrived, South was a tad disappointed to see the duplicated length in hearts between dummy and his hand — nine of the combined high-card points that would produce a mere two tricks!

But there were two good suits to work on for length tricks, the only caveat being the need to tackle them in the right order and that didn’t necessarily mean longer first!

Always needing at least one diamond winner to go with the two hearts, one spade and (maybe) five clubs, declarer did the right thing by winning the first heart in dummy to lead a diamond towards his hand.

When the King held, it was time to shift gears and go after the club suit and not just in any cavalier fashion like ducking the first round to maintain a link to the dummy.

That play would have worked had the suit been divided 3-2, but when South took the better line of cashing the ace and King instead, the 4-1 split meant that the suit had to be abandoned.

In favour of a second round of diamonds toward the closed hand. Finally some good news as East’s ace arrived when needed to yield four tricks in that suit to go with two in each of hearts and clubs plus the spade ace. Maybe not the nine tricks declarer might have envisioned when dummy was tabled, but any nine would do!