Contract Bridge

This hand provides yet another example of the importance of forming an overall plan of play before you proceed. Assume you’re declarer at six hearts and West leads the king of spades. How should you continue?

Actually, the entire issue is decided by your first play from dummy! If you take the king of spades with the ace, you go down one, eventually losing a diamond and a club against normal defense.

But if you play low from dummy and trump the king of spades, preserving dummy’s ace for later use, nothing can stop you from making the slam.

Let’s see what happens if you ruff the king of spades.

First you cash the ace of trump, both defenders following suit. Next you lead the four of diamonds, giving West a choice of going up with the ace or allowing you to win with dummy’s jack.

If West goes up with the ace, that is the only trick you will lose since you can later dispose of your J-10-7 of clubs on dummy’s ace of spades and Q-J of diamonds.

And if West allows dummy to win the first diamond instead, you’ll be on equally firm ground. In that case, you’ll discard the king of diamonds on the ace of spades, give up a club trick and later ruff two clubs in dummy to finish with 12 tricks.

The disadvantage of winning West’s opening spade lead with the ace is that it forces you to choose a discard from your hand before you’re ready to do so. By delaying the discard until later on, you put yourself in a position where, if West has the ace of diamonds, you can make the slam regardless of how he elects to defend.