BRIDGE

For sure defense is tough to get right mainly because each defender can only see half of his side's assets and has to rely on his partner's signals, the sight of dummy and his own reasoning to get all of the tricks his side has coming.

Still, it's amazing how often you see debacles like the one created by one pair of defenders when this deal was contested in an online team match.

At one table of the match, East-West overbid just a tad to play in four spades and found a magical lie of the cards: 2-2 spades and club fillers that meant the suit could be played for two losers: the spade game was unbeatable (maybe!).

North cashed one high heart and switched to ace and a club in search of a third-round ruff: good idea but no cigar this time!

So that his teammates' buying the contract in four hearts was going to be a good gain as down one would complement four spades making very nicely.

Down one? Yes, with the “obvious” loss of two spades and two diamonds.

West did cash one high spade and East's play of the ten was intended in his partnership's signalling methods to deny holding the Queen. Except West was reading a different script and whatever he hoped to accomplish with a low spade to his partner's hoped-for Queen at trick two wasn't exactly what happened!

Four hearts just making! Meanwhile, how about a more enterprising line of defense against four spades? South overtakes the heart King to shift to the club Queen and if West errs by covering . . . ?