Contract Bridge

This deal occurred in the quarterfinal of the 1988 Spingold team championship. It features excellent play by Jim Mahaffey, captain of the team that eventually captured the title.

Mahaffey held the South cards and reached four hearts on the bidding shown. West led the ace of spades, cashed the ace of clubs and exited with a second club.

It appears that declarer must lose two more tricks to West’s red kings and so go down one. But Mahaffey proceeded to demonstrate that this was not true.

He won the club with dummy’s king, discarding a diamond, and discarded two more diamonds on the K-Q of spades. This brought him to the crossroads.

One obvious line of play is to take a finesse in hearts and, if it loses, later try a diamond finesse. As can be seen, this fails as the cards lie.

However, Mahaffey had paid close attention to the bidding and therefore adopted an approach designed to protect against West’s holding both missing kings — a possibility made more likely by West’s vulnerable overcall.

At trick six, he ruffed dummy’s last club, then cashed the ace of hearts. When the king did not appear, he continued with a second heart, saddling West with the lead.

This left West with two losing choices: He could either return a diamond into South’s A-Q or lead a spade, allowing declarer to ruff in dummy while discarding the queen of diamonds. Either way, the game was home, giving Mahaffey’s team a sizable pickup on the deal.