Contract Bridge

Good defense depends largely on partnership cooperation. A fine defensive pair nearly always finds the best defense once the opening lead is made, after which they have an opportunity to help each other during the ensuing play.

Today’s deal shows how good defensive teamwork can solve a difficult problem. West led the ace of clubs, on which East played the nine. Had East not played the nine, West would have had a difficult choice as to whether to shift to a spade or a heart. As it was, though, West had no problem.

East’s play of the nine was an obvious suit- preference signal. Considering the club strength visible in dummy, East could hardly be signaling for a club continuation, so the nine could be interpreted only as directing a shift to the higher- ranking of the two side suits (spades and hearts). Had East preferred a heart return because he had no hearts or had the ace, he would have played his lowest club on the ace to ask for the lower- ranking suit to be returned.

Accordingly, West led a spade at trick two. But in order to convince East that he wanted a club return at trick three, he led the queen instead of his fourth- best spade. Had West led the seven, East might have won with the ace and been tempted to return a spade, hoping West had the king.

East had no trouble reading the situation correctly. He took the queen of spades with the ace and returned a club. South now could not avoid going down one, and when in practice he tried to make the contract by ruffing with the jack, he was overruffed by the queen and later lost another trump trick to East to finish down two.