There are many hands in Bridge that keep coming as routine and are easily written off as of no consequence. But when an ordinary routine hand is turned into a flash buckling defense, it makes blazing headlines as did this hand from a Bermuda Bowl Championship where the Dallas Aces of USA brought about a startling victory over the mighty Italians. This makes our first of the two illustrations north south in 4H.
The opening lead by west was the KD from the AK and the following dummy surfaced before east the brilliant Booly Wolf who as east held the weakest of the 4 hands.
Place yourself in the east seat and plan your defense, if any after hearing the following strong bidding sequence of NS, where west opened with 1D, north doubled, south bid 2D, north now bid 3D, south bid 3H, which north raised to 4H. With south the declarer showing almost a full opening hand as is apparent from his bidding, east reasoned that apart from the AK of diamonds with partner, he would be holding a likely honor in heart with a probable 4 card suit besides something in clubs.
Still we might be wondering as to how east can come in the picture for turning the tables on the declarer with his bust of a no entry taking hand. The fact that he did in actual play reflects his brilliance. If at this stage you can't figure out how, let me give you the declarer's hand as well.
Seeing all 4 hands, it is quite apparent that on the face of it the contract looks unbeatable with the declarer's 3 apparent losers being 2 diamonds (AK) and a trump (KH). Nevertheless Booby Wolf found a way to beat it. Can your figure out now how?
Wolf reasoned that with a 4 card trump holding placed with west, the only way the contract could be jeopardized was if west held some strong intermediaries in the trump suit, which could trigger a trump promotion. Playing on this assumption, he signaled to his partner deceptively that he intended to ruff diamonds by showing him a doubleton 9x, rather than the 3 actually held. So he played this 9D on partner's opening lead of KD. Encouraged, west dutifully continued diamonds by playing AD and another.
Look at it now from the declarer's angle. He can't afford a diamond ruff and a losing heart finesse. So declarer had no option left but to ruff the third diamond with the 10H. When east followed, declarer knew he was done for by east's well thought of deception. West held the K984 of trumps and could not be prevented from taking his trump promotion trick besides the K of trumps to down the contract. Defense can be easy if one has the foresight to visualize the developing situation.
The second illustration proves this point of defensive signaling where it is imperative that to deceive the declarer in defense, you have to deceive partner first for that one defender is in a better position than the other to judge the overall situation and therefore, must take charge as in this deal:
The bidding:
West led 8S, ducked in dummy. As east how do you defend?
Not too difficult to foresee that unless partner has an entry to shift to hearts, the contract is unbeatable. And the only likely entry with west could be in diamonds. So to discourage the spade continuation for an obvious switch to hearts, east won the first spade (ducked in dummy) with the KS and not the QS that he held too - a clear cut case for west to shift to hearts. By doing so east deceived partner by playing the KS first because he had the foresight to defend.
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North (Dummy) East
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A K Q 10 9 8 7 3
Q 10 6 5 2 --
J 7 9 4 2
K 8 3 J 6 5 4 2
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South North West East South
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J 4 A J 1 0 8 7 6 4 3 2 K Q 5 9
A J 7 3 K J 8 5 3 2 A Q 1 0 4 9 7 6
Q 10 5 3 Q 1 0 2 K 7 9 5 A J 8 6 4 3
A 9 7 Q 1 0 5 3 2 7 J 9 8 4 A K 6
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S N
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1 D 2 C
2 D 2 S
3 C 3 D
3 N T ALL PASS
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