Contract Bridge

A declarer must feel his way along at the start of many hands since he rarely knows at the outset exactly how the unseen cards are divided. He usually begins by making a few assumptions based on the bidding (or lack of it) and the early play. But as the play progresses, declarer often revises his preliminary plan because new developments have shed additional light on the composition of the adverse hands.

Observe South’s method of play in this deal where West led a heart against four spades. Declarer went up with the ace and tried a spade finesse, losing to the king, whereupon West returned the nine of diamonds.

It was now only trick three, yet South knew just about all he needed to know about the makeup of the East-West hands. It was certainly reasonable to assume that West’s heart lead was a singleton, as he surely would have played another heart had he had one. It was equally reasonable to assume that West did not have the queen of diamonds, as East was almost certain to have the queen (as well as the king of clubs) for his opening bid.

Declarer therefore put up dummy’s ace (had he played the jack from dummy, he would have gone down). He then finessed the queen of clubs, cashed the ace and ruffed a club high in dummy.

Next came three rounds of trump, on which he discarded a heart from dummy as East was forced to come down to the K-Q of hearts and Q-10 of diamonds. South then administered the coup de grace by exiting with a heart. After cashing his two heart tricks, East had no choice but to return a diamond from the Q-10, allowing declarer to score the last two tricks with the jack and king to make the contract.