Gather intelligence before deciding

The Duke of Wellington was discussing war, but with a small change we can make an equally valid point about bridge: All the business of bridge is to endeavor to find out what you don’t know by what you do.

In other words, as you play out a deal, you learn more about the opponents’ hands and should use this information.

Against four hearts, West led the club 10. East won the first trick with the ace, cashed the club king (the accepted way of showing a doubleton) and exited with a diamond.

With a guaranteed spade loser, declarer had to find the trump queen to make his contract. Assuming West had five clubs to East’s two, there were 11 empty spaces in East’s hand for the heart queen, but only eight in West’s hand. However, those 11-to-8 odds weren’t good enough for South. He wanted to find out more about the distribution before committing himself.

Judging that West would have led a singleton diamond if he had one, declarer overtook the diamond king with dummy’s ace and discarded his club queen on the diamond queen. Now came the spade queen from the board. East won with the ace and returned a diamond.

South ruffed with the heart ace, cashed the spade king, discarding dummy’s club loser, then led the heart eight and ran it. When it won, he repeated the heart finesse, drew West’s last trump and claimed.

Why was South so confident about the hearts? Because East had passed as dealer and had already shown up with 11 points: the club ace-king and spade ace. He couldn’t hold a queen as well.