In spite of West’s good play, overtaking the J of spades with the Ace, and returning a spade to the Queen, South has his endplay intact. Declarer discards a club on the third round of spades, forcing East to lead diamonds for a ruff and discard, or to break the club suit, thus avoiding any club loser. If East has another spade and leads it, declarer discards a second club on the spade winner in dummy.

I’ve never usurped executive privilege by responding on Bobby’s Aces site, but Eddie’s comment about not giving your partner the opportunity to make a mistake (by breaking the club suit) was reminiscent of something my late husband Norman Kay always preached to me: If you place partner in the position of making an error on defense that YOU could have prevented (either costing a trick or not beating a contract), the FAULT (otherwise known today belittlingly as a ‘Charge’) IS YOURS. Good partnerships make life easier for one another as is evidenced at the high levels of the game. Of course, the nuisance of counting out declarer’s hand most times makes the decision much easier. I personally prefer blogging to counting — but to each his own.

Hi Nara,

This was a match point pairs hand and the prize for declarer would be to take 11 tricks in 4 hearts rather than 10 tricks. When and if the declarer discards a club on the third lead of spades he would automatically hold himself to only 10 tricks instead of 11, therefore making minimum. Since it was a match point event it is assumed that the reader knows what the goals are and although it WAS NOT MENTIONED how many tricks were taken it is assumed that everyone kept their own count.

Thanks for writing. However, it turns out that your comment could be misleading to other readers since there is no gain for declarer to discard a loser on the spade, but rather it would be normal for declarer to hope to guess the club himself (he cannot but he does not know that before he tries it).

Hi Bobby,

thanks for the clarification. I agree with you that my comment here could be misleading. If possible, feel free to delete my original comment, your reply, and this request.

There’s another way declarer can run 10 tricks into 9 and then back to 10 again: after drawing trumps and ruffing out diamonds, he leads a spade to the 10. East wins and 1) returns a spade to west’s ace. West leads a spade, declarer rises with the king and now has two spade tricks to pitch his losing clubs; 2) returns the queen of spades to west’s ace with again two spade pitches; 3) returns the queen of spades, west ducks, and now south only must lose one more trick, a club, no matter how the clubs are distributed. All of this is fun, but I’m not sure it’s bridge! And please, feel free to delete this comment as well, unless your laugh quotient is short today.

Hi Everyone,

There used to be a wonderful feature in long ago Bridge World magazines with an appropriate title well discussed called the “Theatre of the Absurd”. Recent comments would be well stored to be so labeled.