Contract Bridge

This deal features a play that might be easily missed by many players. West leads the K- A and another spade against four hearts. East ruffs and returns a diamond, and South goes up with the ace, since the bidding and the diamond return both indicate that West has the king.

Declarer now needs the rest of the tricks to make the contract. Obviously, he can’t meet this goal unless he can somehow dispose of his diamond loser.

One possible approach is to draw trump and cash the A- K- Q of clubs, hoping to find the opposing clubs divided 3- 3. In that case, the seven of clubs would become a trick on which declarer could discard dummy’s queen of diamonds. If South adopted this line of play on the actual hand, he’d go down one after the clubs turned out to be divided 4- 2.

But if declarer follows a more promising line of play, he makes the contract. After taking the ace of diamonds, he plays five rounds of trump, discarding a diamond from his hand on the last trump to reduce himself to four cards, all of them clubs. Dummy at this point consists of the queen of diamonds and A- K- 3 of clubs.

In the meantime, West must also reduce his hand to four cards, and therein lies the difference. When the last trump is led from dummy, West, who is down to the king of diamonds and J- 10- 9- 6 of clubs, cannot find a satisfactory discard. Whatever he does, South scores the last four tricks.

Observe that it costs South nothing to play the hand this way. He still makes the contract if the clubs break 3- 3, but also succeeds when West ( or East) started with four or more clubs and the king of diamonds.