Some plays in bridge are simply exceptional. It is only the farsightedness of a player who can visualize the ending much earlier than the others that leads him on course to the winning goal. Those who lack this imaginative faculty and get rattled up too early with the adverse placing of cards get lost in their game and end up on the losing side.
Bridge, above all is a game of patience. A slip in play not necessarily means a battle lost. With a little inventiveness and vision, one can recover and be on track again.
For there are some real tough hands in bridge where adverse distribution can mar any declarer play and give him the shivers. Our problem for today is one such tough cookie to tackle. Place yourself in the south seat on the following hand and see if you can match south's tackling of the contract of 4S bid straight away with south opening 1S and north closing it with a 4S bid on the following hand:
The opening lead is the JS and as you view the dummy sitting in the south seat, you know the lead has already given the opponents a clear advantage of 2 heart tricks straightaway. With the inevitable trump loser still to come being the trump ace, the declarer cannot afford to give any more trick. Of course there are no losers, in the side suits. So it all boils down how best to tackle the trump suit in a way where the opponents are unable to get an additional trick.
But does it look possible with east holding such solid trumps. Of course there would be no problem if the declarer could view in advance the trump holding of east.
As south how would you go about it? Of course if you are a average player you would tackle trumps in a routine manner by playing low from dummy towards the 2 touching honours in hand and would of course receive a startling setback at the void from west with little chance to recover as East holding A109 after the trump opening has gone to the Q n hand. There is little the declarer can do to prevent east from taking 2 tricks now.
Of course those who anticipate the worst distribution would tackle trumps in a different way. For they would reason that the only way the contract can be beaten is if west holds all 4 trumps. There is no escape then in not giving him 2 sure trump tricks. So the only logical play in trumps would be based on the fair chance of east holding all four trumps as was the case in reality. So the proper play is marked, isn't it? Yes, you got it. Lead the J of trumps from dummy. East cannot prevent you from pitching all his trumps save the trump ace. For if east covers JS with ace, and west blanks out declarer can play twice from dummy to pick east's 109 of spades under his KQ8. A duck would not help either with JS winner and the KQ8 still lying above A109.
Well to come back to the actual play. The declarer slipped by making the wrong play on trumps by leading low from dummy first to get the shock of his life with a void from west.
Take it from here. Do you still manage to make the contract, as did the declarer? Well lets see how he cleared the mess. He played AK of clubs, a ruffed a club in hand followed by AK of diamonds and a ruff in dummy. This is of course after the opening JH went to the QH - AH with east returning a heart to king in dummy. At this point the declarer had managed to take 8 tricks and the opponents only one. The end position was:
Declarer made the killing move of 9 of clubs. East could not let him ruff low for declarer's 9th trick with the 10th trick to follow. So per force he ruffed with 10S.
Did you over ruff impulsively and lost or matched the stellar performance of the expert by loser on loser play discarding 6H?
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North West East South
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J743 - A1095 KQ862
KQ7 J1095 A84 632
K2 Q10973 J64 A85
K952 J863 Q107 A4
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