Bridge

Opening lead — five of spades.

Assume you get to three notrump as shown and West leads the spade five, very likely from a five- or six-card suit since he is not leading the suit his partner bid. You win East’s king with the ace and return the queen of clubs, which loses to the king. Back comes the seven of spades, and West makes the correct play of letting dummy win with the jack.

You are now headed for defeat because, when you get around to leading a heart to try to score your ninth trick, East takes the ace and returns a spade, and West cashes three spade winners for down one.

What’s wrong with this picture, you might ask? The answer is that you lost the contract at trick one, when you should have ducked East’s king of spades! True, this means that you wind up with only one spade trick rather than two, but in exchange you make three notrump instead of going down. You lose the first two spade tricks and later lose a club and a heart, but the rest of the tricks are yours.

While it’s granted that it’s mighty difficult to play the spade six at trick one instead of the ace — you’re sacrificing a sure second spade trick by doing so — that’s what you have to do to make the contract.

The clue to the winning play lies in the bidding. East is marked by his opening bid with nearly all the missing high cards, including the ace of hearts and king of clubs. If declarer can dislodge both of these cards without going down while doing so, he can score four clubs, two hearts, two diamonds and a spade.

The lone threat is West’s presumed long spade suit. That threat is eliminated by holding up the ace until the third round. South then takes a club finesse, wins any return and next forces out the ace of hearts to secure nine tricks.