Contract Bridge

Eternal Vigilance

Opening lead — five of spades.

There are many hands where declarer finds it safer to have one defender on lead rather than the other. In these deals, declarer tries to shape his play in such a way as to prevent the more dangerous opponent from gaining the lead.

The principle is certainly sound, but applying it to an actual situation is not always as obvious as it might seem.

Assume you’re in four hearts and West leads a spade. When you play low from dummy, East produces the king, which you take with the ace. If you now start to think about how to proceed, you’re wasting your time. You can no longer make the contract, whatever you do.

Let’s say you draw trump and try the club finesse. East wins with the king and returns a spade to his partner’s queen. West then shifts to a low diamond, and you finish down two.

But if you take a moment to think about your play at trick one, instead of at trick two, you make the contract. Your chief concern should be how to keep West off lead so he can’t play a diamond through dummy’s king. And when you give the matter sufficient thought, you realize that this goal can be achieved by ducking East’s king of spades!

The purpose of the duck is to kill West’s potential entry card in spades. Once you lose the first trick, you are virtually certain to make the contract. If East returns a spade, you win with the ace, draw trump and lead the jack of clubs.

You lose the finesse to East’s king, but East is then helpless. Eventually you score 10 tricks — one spade, five hearts and four clubs — simply because you stopped to think out the proper play at trick one.