Dummy play in Bridge is the most acknowledged criteria for ranking a Bridge player. For here the canvas can be a large one wherein the declarer can draw upon all his Bridge repertoire in the making of his contract - from a simple safety play to the most complex of squeezes, from a delicate deception to a far sighted endplay, from elimination to cross ruff, from dummy reversal to trump coup. All these gadgets in Bridge for the play can come to mind when a far sighted Bridge play plans his dummy play. To know the delicacy involved even in a simple safety play, let us begin with a simple example. Suppose the dummy and your hand are as follows:

To make the best move for not losing more then one trick, what should be your best move? The defenders are bound to make at least one trick in this suit however well you play. So start with the ace guarding against a singleton king in either hand. If nothing happens your only hope left is a 3-2 break. But suppose south holds 5 of spades instead of 4S on the same cards, what should be your move now? Here the best move would be to start with the JS from dummy, guarding against the west having the singleton 8, 9 or 10. Suppose the actual picture of west east cards are as under:

The jack is covered by the king and ace, and when west's singleton 9 falls you can cross back to dummy and play the 6 for a finesse against east. Your play can fail only if either defender has a singleton K although the odds for west to have a middle singleton is in the ratio of 3:2.

Let us now come to our main illustration. NS reach 6S on the following bidding with these cards:

The bidding: The opening lead from west is the 3S. How do you plan your little slam? First of all always pause and plan in no hurry. What do you think of the opening lead? Obviously a singleton. It appears the slam shall fail on this unfortunate lie of the cards as east will surely take his ace and give his partner a ruff unless ....? Yes, unless you cleverly plan to deceive him by dropping you KS without hesitation. East may now think that his partner is showing a three card holding. Not daring to risk a spade ruff by the declarer on return of a spade, suppose east switches to the QC to give you a breathing time. What next? You have still only 11 tricks so what is your only chance? Think a head and plan your play on the only hope of making the 12th trick on a planned double squeeze.

So you test the trumps with A and K first to know the distribution. East produces the singleton 5H. The diamond suit if it is splitting 4-3 is likely to be in majority with west rather than east on the vacant space principle. So if he give 3 diamonds to east, he has to have 3 clubs to west's 5 clubs. Once you visualise this most likely distribution of the opponents, you must act on that assumption for executing the double squeeze. Play next your top 3 diamonds discarding a spade from your hand. It is time now to reveal the west east cards as under:

After playing the 2 trumps and the 3 top diamonds, when you return to hand with the third round of trumps and play off the remaining trumps but one, this position would emerge.

On the play of the last trump, see the squeeze developing first on west as he has to throw a club per force to protect his JD as his guard for dummy's 6D. Once he discards the club, the squeeze shifts to the other opponent east who is a dead duck, knowing he can't throw QS which guards declarer's 9S in hand. Neither can be un-guard his clubs looking at dummy's K4 doubleton and having seen his partner discarding a club too. The double squeeze succeeds and the slam comes rolling home. Even if east had held 4 diamonds he would have succumbed to a simple squeeze in spades and diamonds. East was an unhappy man having suffered the most being foxed and squeezed together.

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Dummy             Your Hand

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J 6             A Q 7 4 3 2

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WEST                   EAST

9                  K 10 8 4

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     WEST              EAST

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        3      A Q 10 8 6 4

    9 4 3                 5

  J 9 7 5            10 8 4

9 8 7 5 2            Q J 10

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  North               South

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  J 7 2               K 9 5

  7 6 2        A K Q J 10 8

A Q 6 2                 K 3

  A K 4                 6 3

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North   West   East   South

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-        -      Q         9

-        -      -         8

6        J      -         -

K 4     9 8   J 10        6

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 S      W        N        E

1H      P       2D       2S

4H      P       5C        P

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6H           A L L  P A S S

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