The opening lead being a blind one, may or may not turn up to he helpful for the defenders. Sometimes the bidding is not too clear cut. By and large, the bidding does help in defender's choice of the opening lead. But the real battle begins when the dummy comes down and both the declarer and the defenders work out their strategy to achieve the goal in sight, with the natural advantage always to the declarer who can see half the deck his side holds unlike the defenders who have to probe each others distribution and key cards.
In Bridge routine defence takes place most of the time and when declarer errs in his timing of play, the defenders gain the momentum to down the contract. At times the declarer pays a deceptive game to hoodwink the defenders and most often both the declarer and the defenders keep battling each other to gain the upper hand. But in our illustration today routine defence will not do. You need to rise above it with a definite plan to counter declarer's maneuvering at acquiring the number of tricks needed for his contract to make.
Today's illustration shows the exceptional alacrity of the defender sitting east after hearing the following bidding:
When west led the 6S, east saw the following dummy spread on his right, holding the following cards:
In the 4H contract, JS won west's opening lead of 6S, declarer following with the 9S. A low heart to the jack in the closed hand lost to west's king who returned the spade for east to ruff. As east how would you proceed to shy the contract?
Let us see the declarer's prospects. He has shown a balanced hand with a 5 card heart suit. What else? His NT bid places him with no singleton and the 6S opening lead from partner as per rule of 11 shows declarer has at least 3 spades. Since declarer presumably does not hold a singleton, his likely distribution is 3-5- 3-2 or 3-5 2-3. If the latter then partner has no club and a club return could give an immediate ruff to partner who can lead the third spade for you to ruff again. Getting 2 ruffs, and giving partner the KH and a club ruff are enough to beat the contract. But if declarer has 3 clubs, aren't you getting 2 clubs anyway to down the contract? So west's safe exit is a trump. Declarer takes it with 10H in hand and at trick 5 declarer goes for the club finesse of the 10C to west's KC. Well what now? Your partner has no trump left and you have exhausted your exit cards. Do you play a diamond or a club at this stage and why? A diamond is going into the declarer's split tenace of ace in hand and Q in dummy. Similarly a club is going into the jaws of AJ starting from the dummy.
If you have found the right answer, you are proudly at par with Peter Weichsel who was the only one to find the right answer in the 1975 Sunday Times International Pair Contest partnering Alan Sontag to win that most exclusive pair event in the world. Yes, he returned a club reading well the declarer's following hand:
AK9, AJ1073, A62, 73. His reasoning for a club return was that at most with 2 clubs, he would be unable to discard his third diamond - the club return was therefore, eminently safe.
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S W N E
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1H P 2C Pass
2NT p 3H Pass
4H
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North
(Dummy)
J75
Q85
Q10
AJ1042
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East
2
962
K974
KQ865
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