East cashes QS and KS, west playing the 5S on the second round. The spade continuation with the AS was ruffed by the declarer who knocked out east's ace of trumps and winning the trump return, ran his diamonds to throw his 2 club losers and thus making his contract, for south held: In the next example NS land in 4H after north opens 1NT, on the following hand after west led the 2D:
West held: Declarer ducked the first diamond, won the diamond and ran the 8H to west's queen who now cashed QD. Since diamond and clubs were out of question for leading back, west chose to lead a low spade. Declarer played low and won east's queen with the AS to run the spade 10 through west, setting up a discard for his QC, making 4H, as he held:
Well did you spot the defense errors in both the above examples? If not, you should learn the essential principle of defensive play referred to above which is amplified clearly in Miles Classic book, 'How to win at duplicate Bridge?' He sets it out as "the ability of a defender to tell which tricks will vanish unless a vigorous effort is made to cash them. Thus a good defender must know when to be aggressive, to establish suits or cash tricks, and when to be passive, awaiting tricks to fall into the lap, letting the declarer do all the guesswork.
In the light of the 2 examples set above, one can easily see that in the first example it should have been pretty apparent to east that the defense had to set up a club trick early, before declarer could draw trumps and have the time to use his diamonds. So the killing defense for east was to return the 3C at trick 3 assuming west has the QC, a move that had nothing to lose and much to gain on assumption; from east's point of view his thought process should run on these lines that if west has the AD or 2 trump tricks, the contract is always down. If west holds none, declarer has sure 4 trump tricks, 5 diamond tricks and the club ace for 10 tricks. Thus timing in the defense was vital. Before east's trump ace is knocked out east is left with no choice but to take the last chance in clubs.
In the second example, the crucial fact that needed early recognition was that once declarer won the DA, dummy was left without a good source of tricks with only one high card of KS left, with no possibility of declarer ruffing tricks or setting up any side suit. Hence the passive defense was needed. There was no hurry for west to lead spades, which in fact was a defense blunder. If declarer had spade losers, there was no way of avoiding them.
This should have been west's thought process. And to get out of the lead safely, there was a very safe exit of a trump return leaving declarer to struggle for his tricks with the flat dummy providing no help to avoid his inevitable losers. Can you spot a second best return for west? Yes - the return of spade jack instead of a low one would have spelled defeat for the declarer. Let us end with NS reaching 4H after south opens 1S and rebids 2H:
West led JC, and ruffing a second club, declarer tried AH and a heart, which west won and rightly shifted to a diamond, setting up a 4th defensive trick. A club lead would have given declarer the tempo ahead with time to discard dummy's diamonds at trick 2, did you do likewise? Good enough but not expertise defense. Can you spot the errorsin both defense and play? The declarer misplayed. He should start running spades after cashing AH, thus conceding 2 heart tricks but avoiding the diamond loser. Yes - the defense blundered also. An expert would however switch to diamonds immediately at trick 2 to find the killing defense.
============
NORTH
============
J 9 3
Q 10 4
K Q J 9 4
A J
============
=========================
West East
=========================
10 5 4 A K Q 7 6
8 5 A 2
8 7 6 5 10 3
Q 9 5 2 K 8 6 4
=========================
==========================
8 2
K J 9 7 6 3
A 2
10 7 3
==========================
============
NORTH
============
K 9 4
10 8
A 7 3
7 5 4 3 2
============
=============
J 8 5 2
Q 6
Q 10 5 2
K 10 6
=============
==============
A 10
A K J 9 4 3
9 8 6
A Q
==============
=============================================
North West East South
=============================================
A K 8 3 10 5 4 2 Q J 9 7 6
10 9 6 4 K Q 5 J A 8 7 3 2
9 4 3 K 10 6 2 Q 8 7 5 A J
Q 7 5 4 J 10 8 3 A K 9 2 6
=============================================
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017