Contract Bridge

A particular play will sometime be only slightly superior to another play, but even so, a conscientious declarer always tries to select the better of the two.

Consider this deal where West leads the king of diamonds, East signaling with the nine. West continues with the ace and another diamond, won by East with the queen. East returns a club, taken with the ace, and, whether South knows it or not, he is at the critical point of the play.

Let’s suppose South now cashes the ace of trump, as many declarers would do. After West shows out, South would have to lose a trump trick and go down one.

Now let’s suppose that

South initiates the trumps by leading low to dummy’s king. In that case, he makes the contract by continuing with a trump from dummy. After East plays the ten and South the queen, declarer returns to dummy with a spade and leads another trump. East’s J-8 succumb to South’s A-9, and declarer has the rest of the tricks.

It may be argued that East will hold all four missing trumps only once in 20 deals, and it is therefore splitting hairs to contend that the ace-of-hearts play at trick five is wrong and playing a low heart to the king is right.

The counter to this is that bridge is a game where you occasionally do have to split hairs to win. Even though how you initiate the trump suit will matter only 5% of the time, the fact remains that playing the king first will never cause you to lose an extra trick, while playing the ace first sometimes might.

The argument in favor of the king play is absolutely irrefutable.