Contract Bridge

Assume you’re declarer in three notrump and West leads the K-Q of hearts, both of which you duck, and then a third heart, which you win with the ace.

You have eight sure tricks and three obvious ways to try for a ninth: a 3-3 break in either black suit and, failing that, a diamond finesse. But when you cash the Q-K-A of clubs and then the Q-K-A of spades, both suits turn out to be divided 4-2.

Bad luck, you could say, but you still have the diamond finesse to fall back on. When you attempt it, however, the queen loses to West’s king, and he cashes two hearts to put you down one.

An unfortunate outcome, you might think to yourself, but the fact is that if you played the hand this way, you did not give it your best effort. You could have secured the contract by taking the queen of hearts with the ace at trick two.

Then, after cashing the top winners of both black suits and getting the bad news, you could put West on lead with your third heart. He would cash three heart tricks, all right, but would then have to lead a diamond from his K-9 at trick 12 and hand you your ninth trick.

You might argue that while this would be a magnificent way to play the hand if you could see the opposing cards at the outset, you can hardly be expected to play this way without peeking.

The answer is that West’s hand is not a great mystery, as he is virtually certain to have the K-Q-J-x-x of hearts and king of diamonds for his one-heart overcall. All you have to do is to take advantage of this information, and you wind up with nine tricks at the end.