Contract Bridge

On some deals, declarer can justifiably claim to have been done in by bad luck. This was seemingly the case in today’s deal, where South was in three notrump and West led a spade.

East won with the ace and returned the nine, declarer’s jack losing to the queen. Back came the ten of spades to the king, establishing West’s suit, and South now had to decide whether to play diamonds or clubs next. Correctly, he opted for a diamond finesse to reduce the danger of West’s gaining the lead. But when he led a diamond to the jack, East won with the queen and returned a club.

Again, South had a choice — he could play East for the king of clubs, or he could put up the ace and hope both the heart and diamond suits would behave favorably. However, the club finesse offered the better chance, so South played low and wound up down two.

It is true that declarer ran into very bad luck. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The spade finesse lost, the diamond finesse lost, the club finesse lost and even the heart finesse would have lost had South tried it. Nor did the diamonds break 3-3.

But despite all this, South should have made the contract. All he had to do was to win East’s spade return with the king at trick two, retaining the J- 6 as a stopper against West’s remaining spades. He would then cross to dummy with a diamond, lead the jack of clubs and finesse. Even if the finesse lost, declarer would be assured of nine tricks in the form of four clubs, two hearts, two diamonds and a spade.

In effect, South jeopardized the contract when he finessed the spade jack at trick two. He had a sure thing by taking the king instead, and he should have done so.