Contract Bridge

Assume you’re East, defending against three notrump. Your partner leads the queen of hearts, and before you do anything, you stop to assess the situation. You know declarer has the king of hearts, and the question is whether you should duck your ace, take the ace and return a heart, or take the ace and discontinue the suit.

It should not take you very long to conclude that if you allow declarer to gain the lead with the king of hearts at either trick one or trick two, he will almost surely make the contract. Dummy’s abundance of tricks — at least seven are in plain view — should convince you that your only hope of defeating the contract lies in spades, and that if South is not vulnerable in that suit, you can’t stop him. Having reached this conclusion, you take partner’s queen of hearts with the ace, and the only remaining question is which spade to lead at trick two.

Ordinarily, with the Q-8-5-2 of spades, you would lead your fourth-best card, the two. But in the present case, where your only chance to beat the contract is to garner four spade tricks at once, you should lead the queen!

As it happens, the queen play is spectacularly successful. You find your partner with the A-J-10-3, and South goes down one before he can even say “good play.” Observe that if you return the two of spades instead of the queen, declarer makes the contract by playing the four or the nine from his hand.

Of course, you must be lucky for the queen play to work out so perfectly, but that is a commodity one must learn to rely on to at least some extent. It certainly offers more hope than allowing declarer to win the first heart, or taking the ace and mechanically returning a heart at trick two, which is tantamount to conceding the contract.