Contract Bridge

When the opponents’ bidding warns declarer that the normal line of play is likely to fail, he should naturally try to turn that information to his advantage. South did exactly that on this deal to bring home a game that would have gone down with ordinary play.

West led a club against four spades, East winning the first two tricks with the A-K and continuing with the jack. Declarer ruffed, West discarding a diamond, and South now had to find a way to avoid losing two heart tricks.

Normally, he would have staked the outcome on winning one of two heart finesses, hoping to find West with either the king or jack. Had declarer relied on this method of play, he would have gone down one.

But South saw when dummy came down that there were only 12 high-card points missing, and it seemed likely to him that East could have all of them to justify his opening bid.

So South abandoned all

thoughts of broaching hearts himself and instead embarked on another line of play that was certain to produce 10 tricks. He cashed all his remaining trumps, discarding the ten of hearts from dummy, and then played the A-K-Q of diamonds, ending up in dummy.

Three tricks remained to be played. Dummy’s last three cards consisted of the A-Q of hearts and eight of clubs, while East’s last three cards were the K-J of hearts and ten of clubs. Declarer now applied the coup de grace by conceding the eight of clubs to East’s ten, forcing East to return a heart into the A-Q and hand declarer his ninth and 10th tricks.

The deal provides a good illustration of how an attentive declarer can profit by deviating from standard operating procedure when the circumstances tell him to do so. East’s hand was virtually an open book from the start, and South simply took advantage of that knowledge to bring in the contract.