Contract Bridge

Amusing incidents occasionally occur in major tournaments. For example, some years ago a young Polish pair, representing their country for the first time in the annual world championship, reached a dreadful grand- slam contract.

After the opening lead was made and dummy appeared, declarer could see that his partner had greatly overbid his values. Declarer looked at the dummy, then looked at his partner and said: “That dummy is an insult to Poland!”

If you were West on the following layout, you might have similar feelings if you reached Six Spades due to partner’s overoptimism after you opened two notrump. However, they don’t allow you to back up and change the contract, so the question is how would you proceed after North leads the ten of clubs? (Assume the missing trumps are divided 3-1 or 2-2). The only genuine chance for the slam is to find South with the doubleton K- Q of clubs, as well as the king of diamonds. Accordingly, you play a low club from the dummy, and South, luckily for you, produces the queen.

You next cash three rounds of trump (South turns up with three of them) and continue with the A- K and another heart, ruffing in dummy. Now you play the club five, taken by South with the king. You hope South will return a diamond away from the king, which would hand you the slam, but he smartly exits with a heart instead.

After discarding a diamond from your hand and ruffing the heart with dummy’s last trump, you return the queen of diamonds, covered by the king and ace. Miraculously, you are now on the verge of making the contract if North holds the jack of diamonds. You hope he started with a hand such as: Whatever North discards on the spade queen, you make the contract. Of course, you must also be sure to congratulate your partner on his brilliance in contracting for such a dreadful slam!