Contract Bridge

One way attempting to change a mediocre bridge player into a good one is to convince him that learning to reason things out is far more important in the long run than expending energy on trying to master complex bidding conventions or fancy plays that come up once in a blue moon.

Take this case where South is in six clubs. West leads the ace of hearts, East following suit, and continues with the jack of hearts, East discarding a diamond as South wins the trick with the king.

Declarer can count 11 tricks at this point and sees that he can score a 12th by taking a successful finesse in either spades or diamonds. But if that is as far as his thinking goes, he is not trying hard enough. The fact is that declarer is sure to make the slam if he plays correctly, and he does not have to subject himself to the element of chance usually associated with a finesse.

At trick two, South learns that West started with seven hearts, and he also learns at the same time — from East’s failure to ruff the second heart lead — that West has all four missing clubs. Eleven of West’s 13 cards are thus accounted for, and declarer’s only remaining task is to find out how many spades and/or diamonds West holds.

Accordingly, South plays four rounds of trump and then cashes dummy’s king of diamonds. After West follows suit, declarer next plays dummy’s king of spades. When West follows suit again, the picture of his original hand is complete. He obviously started with seven hearts, four clubs, one spade and one diamond.

The rest of the play is easy enough. Declarer cashes dummy’s queen of hearts, discarding either a spade or a diamond, and takes a finesse in the other suit, knowing for certain that it will succeed.