Contract Bridge

Declarer often encounters a situation where it is more dangerous to have one defender on lead than the other and must do all he can to prevent this from happening. Here is an unusual case where South applied the principle twice in the same hand.

West led the jack of clubs, and declarer counted his potential losers. He realized that he might lose a trump trick (if he misguessed the trump situation), a club trick and two spade tricks. The only way he could lose two spade tricks, though, was if East gained the lead and returned a spade through the king and West had the ace. Otherwise, South could eventually discard two spades on dummy’s diamonds.

South therefore embarked on a line of play that was designed to keep East off lead. His first step was not to play the queen of clubs from dummy at trick one. This eliminated all chance of East ever obtaining the lead with a club.

After the jack held, West led another club to South’s ace, and declarer now pursued his overall plan by leading a trump to the king and finessing the ten on the way back.

When the finesse succeeded, South drew the last trump and claimed 11 tricks. But note that he would have been on equally firm ground had the trump finesse lost to the doubleton queen in West’s hand. In that case, he would have finished with only 10 tricks, but still would have made the contract.

In tackling the trumps as he did, declarer was not so much interested in guessing the location of the queen as he was in making sure that if he lost a trump trick, it would be to West, not East. With West on lead, the contract was secure.