Contract Bridge
Test your play
You are declarer with the West hand at Six Hearts, and North leads the jack of clubs. You play the queen from dummy and win South’s king with the ace. When you cash the A- K of hearts, North turns up with the Q-10- 8, so you must lose a trump trick. How would you proceed from here?
Obviously, you must try to dispose of both of your club losers before North can gain the lead with the trump queen to cash the setting trick in clubs. If all goes well, you can deposit one club on a spade and another on dummy’s fourth diamond. The only problem is which suit to play first.
Strangely enough, the proper method of play calls for tackling the diamonds first. There is an excellent reason for this, as can be demonstrated by assuming that North has something like:
♠ 84
♥ Q 10 8 ♦ 9753
♣ J 10 9 4
If you started by playing the K- Q- A of spades, North would ruff the third spade and cash a club to put you down one. But if you started by playing the A- K- Q of diamonds and learned that North originally had four diamonds, you could safely continue with the fourth diamond and discard one of your clubs. You would then play the K- Q- A of spades and just make it under the wire by discarding your other club loser on the third round of spades. Your only loser on this line of play would be a trump.
However, if the opposing diamonds turned out to be divided 3- 3, you could not afford to play the fourth diamond, since North could ruff and cash a club to defeat you. In that case you would play the K- Q- A of spades next, hoping North could not ruff, and then lead dummy’s last diamond to discard your last club.
The underlying principle is simple enough. Since it is impossible to make the contract if North has fewer than three diamonds, you proceed on the assumption that he has at least three. You therefore lead diamonds first to see exactly how many he started with and adapt your play according to what develops. Leading diamonds first can never be the cause of losing the contract, but leading spades first might be.