Defence in Bridge is easy if you have a certain line marked to defeat the contract. But when the contract is shrouded in different alternates of key card holdings, defence because a real task to unravel the visible but illusory card placements. Most of the time defence is in the dark if there has been no bidding from partner and the opponents have also not revealed much through quick calling of their contract. But when the auction gets crowded and startlingly high, that is when a defender is truly tested.
For by then the pressure of the high stakes begin to tell and many a defender has fallen from grace with his judgement clouded in the maze the bidding made by both the partner and the opponents making life real hard for the defender in today's illustration taken from an American Tournament held many years back where east, a budding player of great expertise was defending a contract of 6S doubled by him on the following hand and bidding where east held:
Being the dealer, he opened 1D and little expected to see such a whirlwind of high bids streaming in. As if south's 4S bid was not enough to startle, partner's 6H bid on it took him into the eye of the storm. Holding avoid in partner's suit never makes a player feel good and secure, but east could do nothing at this stage after his partner had taken command of the Bridge auction by his rather hurried and authoritative little slam bid of 6H. As he was beginning to visualise what could be partner's possible holding to extract such a highly charged bid of 6H placing him no doubt with at least a 8 carder solid suit along with a couple of diamonds perhaps. He was further startle to see south competing to 6S which went pass, pass to him for the final bid.
The critical point of bidding had been reached. For east it was not to difficult to visualise that is 2 aces inclusive of the trump ace along with the fact that his partner had made the highly volatile 6H bid and was also on lead to give him the chance either to ruff the heart or signal violently for the clubs.
The only fear lurking for east was a fact that he had opened in a suit wherein he was kaput. He was rerating his opening bid of 1D. Perhaps a club opening would have made defence much easier. In any case, a 6S bid could not go un-doubled when east held to back aces.
Little did he know what fireworks were in store when his partner led the AH as expected and east was visibly shaken to see a very favourable dummy opening before him on his right as under:- Keeping his fingers crossed, east put no his thinking cap to visualise what could possibly be south's holding. At this point, place yourself in east's seat and take over the defence.
Well what did you play on trick 1 as east? Did you discard of ruff to cash the ace of clubs to down the contract? Panic can cause lot of upsets in Bridge especially when it's a high stake tournament. At the same time complacency can also foil all your designs and make regret you judgement. In actual play even north was regretting his past over 6H although he had considerable defence values against 6H with the further advantage of holding top diamond honours which would have been handy to make the declarer short in trumps. But in any case to get on with the defence. As east what did you finally do? The bidding reveals your partner with a void in spades. Similarly placing partner with 8 hearts leaves declarer void in it. Therefore, ducking hearts by not ruffing could hand south his contract for he could then ruff AH and before knocking out trumps, could muster up 5 diamond tricks which would swipe all his losers away leaving him with only one trump loser of the ace to claim his contract. A good defender thinks ahead. So east ruffed but with the AS! To cash the AC for one down as south held: By the way did you also ruff partner's AH with your AS to avoid the Sword of Damocles swinging over you?
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Dummy (North)
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A 6 2 73 K Q J 10 9 8 5 4
--- 97642 ---
9 8 6 4 3 2 AKQJ10 5
A Q J 10 4 9 7 5 2
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