BRIDGE

UPSIDE DOWN PLAY

You will be pleased to learn that you are playing in seven spades on today’s deal. Your bid of five no trumps asked partner to bid seven if he held two of the top three trump honours, and this enabled you to reach the grand slam with confidence.

West leads the nine of hearts, and you ruff and draw three rounds of trumps. You then cash the queen of diamonds and cross back to the ace of clubs, expecting to make the contract by discarding dummy’s losing clubs on the two top diamonds and ruffing a club with dummy’s last trump. However, it turns out that your diamonds are not all winners, and you have to go one down.

Naturally, you tell your partner that the diamond distribution was unlucky and that the sun will shine another day, but the fact remains: you have just lost 2,310 points by playing the hand in less-than-brilliant fashion. DUMMY REVERSAL

Suppose you ruff the heart lead, cross to dummy with a trump, ruff another heart, then cross to the queen of diamonds and ruff a third heart. Dummy is entered once again with a trump, and a fourth heart is ruffed with the ace of trumps. Next, the nine of diamonds is ruffed, East’s last trump is drawn with dummy’s king, and the rest of your hand is high, your losing club having been discarded on the last trump.

This “upside-down” method of play, going for ruffs in your own hand instead of in dummy, enables you to win a total of eight trump tricks. This is obviously better than drawing three rounds of trumps, and so making only six trumps in the South hand together with one ruff on the table. Bridge hands, like faces, can seem different if looked at upside-down.