Be Prepared To Be Flexible

Some bridge players are imaginative, most less so. An imaginative player always seems to know who has which cards. Often, he relies on table presence. He is less concerned about percentages. (Remote play online has been disadvantageous to this type of player.)

An unimaginative player, who relies on the textbook and analysis, will get most deals right. (World-class pairs usually feature one player from each category.) However, every now and then a deal will come along that will trip him up -- today’s, for example.

Against four hearts, West led the spade ace. East signaled with the queen, the textbook play to show the queen-jack (or a singleton queen). West continued with the spade king and another spade. Declarer ruffed, cashed the club ace, ruffed a club high in the dummy, played a trump to hand, ruffed the club jack high and cashed the

heart jack. Now came the key play: Dummy’s spade nine was led, and when East produced the 10, declarer didn’t ruff. Instead, he discarded a diamond.

East was endplayed. He could either lead a diamond into dummy’s ace-queen or concede a ruff-and-sluff. Whichever he

chose, declarer had no diamond loser and 10 tricks.

“Why didn’t you switch to a diamond at trick three?” asked East.

“Yes, I probably should have done that,” replied West. “But why did you encourage a spade continuation? You can see the advantage in a diamond switch, so play the spade two at trick one, grateful that you have the two, not the seven.”

Always consider the whole deal, not just one suit at a time.