BRIDGE

It goes without saying that a declarer should avoid making plays that can lose but never gain. Conversely, declarer should always be on the lookout for plays that can gain but cannot lose. This principle is surely not debatable, but its application in a given situation is not always easy to spot.

Consider this deal where South was in four hearts. West led the K-A of clubs and continued with the jack. Declarer ruffed and led a trump to the ace, discovering to his horror that West had all five missing trumps.

South did the best he could by abandoning further trump leads and playing diamonds instead. But West ruffed the second diamond and returned a trump, and South later lost a spade trick to go down one.

It is true that when five cards of a suit are missing, they will divide 5-0 only 4% of the time. So to that extent, South was unlucky. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he made an error in the play, and the gods saw fit to punish him for it.

Had South been a member of the school that always asks at the start of play "What can defeat me?" he might have found the way to safeguard his contract. He would have realized, when West continued with a club at trick three, that only a 5-0 trump break could defeat him. Then, in order to protect against this possibility, he would have discarded his seven of spades on the jack of clubs in order to maintain control of the trumps.

Discarding a spade on the club jack could not cost South a trick, but offered him a chance to gain one. It was therefore the correct play, although not an easy one to think of.

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