Bridge

The better way

Opening lead — ten of clubs.

Looking only at the North-South hands, you can see that six spades is unbeatable regardless of how the opposing cards are divided, provided that — and this is a big proviso — declarer knows which opponent has the queen of diamonds. In that case, declarer can collect six spade tricks, two clubs and four diamonds (by means of a finesse or a drop) to make the slam.

But in real life, the location of the crucial queen is not known to declarer. If he stakes everything on the diamond finesse and misguesses which opponent has the queen, he goes down, since at least one heart trick must be lost.

An alternative line of play is for declarer to avoid the diamond guess altogether by discarding his third diamond on the king of clubs. But as he gets rid of one headache, he acquires another, since he might then lose two heart tricks.

There is, however, a reasonable chance of avoiding two heart losers if the latter approach is adopted. If East has the A-Q, only one heart can be lost. If the heart honours are split, declarer will have to guess whether to play the jack or king when he leads a heart toward his hand. This is essentially a 50-50 proposition. Of course, if West has both honours, declarer has no chance on this line of play.

There is no sure way to guarantee 12 tricks, but the best chance, percentagewise, is to draw trump and cash the K-A of diamonds, hoping to drop the queen, roughly a 1-in-5 proposition. This works in the actual deal, and the slam is home.

If the queen does not appear when the K-A are played, declarer can discard his remaining diamond on the king of clubs and then tackle the hearts. In this way, South gives himself two chances to make the slam instead of just one.