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Bridge by David Bird
Weekly and daily bridge columns available

Dealer West, Love all

With North holding the king and queen in the spade suit, South would have fared well by passing out the double. There was no reason to expect this and South decided to leap all the way to game in hearts. How would you have played this contract after West leads a low spade, the nine appearing from East?

The best idea is to hope that East holds three trumps (a 60% prospect when spades are 5-1) and to lead a club at Trick 2. West wins with the queen and delivers a spade ruff, but this causes no problems at all. East is ruffing from a natural trump winner. You ruff the second round of clubs and draw trumps in two rounds. You can then cash the ace of spades and lead the spade 10 for a ruffing finesse through West's jack.

Drawing two rounds of trumps at the beginning would have led to defeat. Suppose you next played the spade queen. East would refuse to ruff with his master trump. When you ducked a round of one of the minors, to establish a route to hand, East would win and draw dummy's last trump. With an unavoidable spade loser, you would be one down.

BIDDING QUIZ

Game all

		WEST	NORTH	EAST	SOUTH
		-	-	1D	1NT
		?

What would you say now on the West cards?