Contract Bridge

Let’s say you’re declarer at four hearts and West leads a club. The first thing you do is count your losers, and if you assume the worst, you see that you might lose two spades, a diamond and a club.

The next thing you do is try to find a way to make the contract even if East has the A- Q of spades sitting over dummy’s K-J and also has something like four diamonds to the Q-10 sitting behind dummy’s K-J- 6-3.

There is no way to guarantee the contract 100%, but you can come close to that figure by planning your play carefully. The best approach is to let East’s queen hold the opening club lead, take the club continuation with the ace and ruff a club in dummy.

You then play the A- K of trump, and when they turn out to be divided 2-2, making the contract suddenly becomes a certainty. You no longer have to worry about the location of the A- Q of spades or queen of diamonds, or how the diamonds are divided.

So you lead a spade from your hand at trick six and play the jack from dummy. As it happens, East wins with the queen, but this is not a matter of great concern because he will have to hand you your 10th trick whether (1) he returns a spade and makes dummy’s king a trick, or (2) he returns a diamond into dummy’s K-J, giving you a free diamond finesse, or (3) he returns a club — if he has one — and hands you a ruffanddiscard.

Note that you must lead a spade toward dummy at trick six, not a diamond. If you were to try a diamond finesse instead, you would go down one after East won and returned a diamond.