FROM KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, 300 W. 57TH STREET, 41ST FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019 CUSTOMER SERVICE: (800) 708-7311 EXT. 236 CONTRACT BRIDGE — BY STEVE BECKER FOR RELEASE SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2021
The art of camouflage West dealer. East-West vulnerable. NORTH A Q J K 10 6 J 8 4 3 10 9 2 WEST EAST 6 3 7 5 J 7 5 3 Q 9 8 2 Q 2 K 10 9 6 A K 6 4 3 J 7 5 SOUTH K 10 9 8 4 2 A 4 A 7 5 Q 8 The bidding: West North East South Pass Pass Pass 1 Pass 3 Pass 4 Opening lead — king of clubs. Assume you’re in four spades and West leads the K-A and another club. You ruff, but the outlook is bleak because it seems likely you’ll lose two diamond tricks and go down one. Upon further consideration, though, you see that you might be able to execute an elimination play that would allow you to make the contract. So you cash the A-Q of
trump, the A-K of hearts and ruff a heart. You next play the ace of diamonds, everyone following low, and exit with a diamond. West wins with the queen and is forced to return a heart or a club, allowing you to ruff in dummy while shedding your remaining diamond loser, and the contract is home. Note, however, that West could have thwarted your scheme by dropping his queen when you cashed the ace of diamonds, in which case you’d have had to lose two diamond tricks. Indeed, West should have seen the handwriting on the wall and made this play, as he had no chance of stopping the contract unless his partner had the K-10 of diamonds. But note further that you could almost surely have forestalled such a play by West by doing a better job of concealing your intentions. Had you led a trump to dummy at trick four and played a diamond to the ace at trick five, West would have had to be uncommonly farsighted to drop his queen under your ace. And if he failed to do so, he would not have been able to extricate himself later from the endplay that gives you the contract.
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