Right Play

Source: The Art of Card Reading at Bridge By Fred L. Karpin

It is the rare day when, at a notrump contract, declarer holding three stoppers in the opening leader’s suit, should properly refuse to win the trick. In today’s deal we have an example of this type of situation. And our South declarer did the right thing.

North-South vulnerable. South dealer

Opening lead: J

On West’s jack of clubs opening lead East played the three and South followed suit with the seven-spot! West, quite naturally continued the “attack” on the club suit, playing the ten-spot next. South won the trick with the queen, and he now had his contracted-for nine tricks four spades, one diamond, and four clubs.

South’s reasoning in declining to capture trick one is easily understandable. First, he made the assumption that West had at least four clubs. Thus South appreciated that he would have to lose one club trick if he were to create a club winner. Further, South figured that if he won the opening club lead with the queen and then cashed the ace and king of clubs and led a fourth club, West, upon taking the trick, would shift to a heart (which he surely would have done, since East’s two discards on the third and fourth clubs would have been the spade and diamond deuces, disclaiming any interest in either of these two suits).

As is evident, a heart shift by West would have enabled East to cash four heart tricks. It should be noted that South made an excellent deceptive false-card at trick one, to lure West into continuing the club suit: he played the club seven, thus leading West to believe that East possessed the deuce of clubs. Thus West was tricked into believing that East’s three-spot was the initiation of a “come on” signal; and West assumed that East held either the Q-3-2 or the K-3-2.

Esta entrada también está disponible en: Spanish

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