Bridge Corner
By Gary Mitchell, August 18, 2006

The bidding

North overbid the hand by a point or two, but her fifth Heart was just too tempting to ignore. South went way overboard. When you bid like this, you had better play the hand very well.

The play

You see that there may be two Club losers and a Spade loser. That’s not too bad, but you have contracted for 12 tricks, so you cannot lose more than one trick! No matter how the spades are situated, you cannot get rid of two Club losers. Therefore, you need to know how many Club losers you do have. Win the Diamond lead, lead a Heart to your hand, and lead a low Club toward the Queen. If West wins the King, you are reduced to a simple finesse in Spades to make your contract. However, if East has the Club King, you need to discard a Club loser on the Spades. The only way that will be possible is if East holds both the King and Jack of Spades. You will need to lead a Spade from dummy and put in the 10. If that works, you need to return to dummy to finesse a second time. This is why you only pull one round of trump at the beginning. You are going to need two entries to the dummy in order to finesse twice in Spades. If you did pull two rounds of trump early, you will wind up a trick short. Try it!

Questions: gary@smabridge.com 
Lessons: 152-6351.