BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

West leads ♣ 4 against South’s game contract and dummy plays the 8; you win the ace and declarer plays the 2. How do you continue?

THE lead must be ‘fourth-best’, so there is no future in returning the suit, even supposing partner holds the king. You will still need to find another trick from somewhere, and you can calculate from the bidding that partner has no more than 5 or 6 points with a singleton trump.

You must switch to a diamond at trick two, and specifically the ♦ 10 in case partner has the queen. Your care is rewarded when you discover that you need to make two diamond tricks, since declarer holds ♣ k and ♦ AJx. Note that a low diamond would allow declarer to play low from hand, but the 10 forces him to cover and partner can lead the suit back through dummy’s 97.