Bridge: Mass-tricked treaty

THERE are several possible ways to tackle a suit of J 9 5 in dummy facing K 7 2 in hand when your object is to avoid losing all three tricks. Not every declarer got it right when the deal below was played in the teams events of the recent European Community Championships.

Game all; dealer East

North

A J 10 8 4

A K

J 9 5

Q J 4

West

2

9 8 6 4 3 2

A 8 6

8 3 2

East

9 6

Q J 5

Q 10 4 3

A 10 9 6

South

K Q 7 5 3

10 7

K 7 2

K 7 5

South played in Four Spades and, after a passive heart lead, drew trumps. He cashed the second top heart and played a club; East won the second club and exited safely with another. This left declarer and dummy with nothing but trumps and diamonds.

A popular line was to lead the jack of diamonds from dummy - succeeding at once if East is unable to cover with the Queen. The first thing that went wrong was that East could cover. The second misfortune was that West turned up with the ace. Well aware of the situation, West returned the six of diamonds (rather than the eight) and declarer misguessed by playing dummy's nine.

East produced the ten (the third setback) and the last chance - that East held no more diamonds and would have to concede a ruff and discard - also failed.

The best line seems to be to start the diamonds by leading the five. As the cards lie East cannot profitably play an honour and, although declarer's seven loses to the eight, West is end-played.

The advantage of the successful play is that, in some circumstances, a sleepy East might fail to play his eight (if he has it) on the first diamond trick. If he does produce the eight, however, declarer is no worse off than if he had started with the jack, which is sure to be covered if East holds the queen.