Defense in Bridge can be quite tough at times. In the heat of the moment at the table, defense can falter when the declarer cleverly conceals his distribution and intentions from his opponents. Of course most of the time the defense can judge what the declarer is planning. But occasionally there comes the challenging hand for the defense as well as the declarer where the latter uses all his means to sneak through the defense in the making of his contract. This calls for an equally high level of defense that can jeopardize all declarer's plans to shy the contract.
The more information is exchanged in the bidding the better for the defense to judge the declarer's hand. But at the same time, the stress of the high level contract can make a defenders task very hard for the right and timely judgement.
Todays illustration as a lesson in defense is not an easy one to grasp. Place yourself in the west seat and defend the contract bid as under holding the following hand:
The bidding has gone as under:
The lead should be no problem for your partner has bid hearts at almost every level. So you begin with the normal deuce of hearts to see the following dummy opening before you as north.
On the deuce of hearts, when dummy plays low, your partner east plays the 10H which as expected, south ruffs with 3S. But as you contemplate on trying to figure out how your side can beat this double contract of 5S with the declarer being void in hearts clearly pointing out to the fact that he must be holding a highly distributional hand looking to the fact that 13 HCPs are between you and the dummy leaving the remaining 27 HCPs about equally distributed between the declarer and east who has opened the bidding. Suddenly your thoughts get a startling jolt when at trick 2, the declarer surprisingly leads the 5S from hand. This is indeed a very unusual move made by the declarer to put you to test immediately. This much you can well judge on the bidding that your partner cannot be holding more than singleton trump, which is highly unlikely to be a high honour for without the top spade honours, the declarer would never venture into a 5S call. So you take the JS on which your partner follows with 6S as expected.
The critical point of defense has now been reached. What is your next move and why? declarer's unorthodox move in playing a low trump first must have some motive and you need to find a quick answer to it. For that you need to assume the possible distribution of the declarer which is known to be unbalance and most likely a two suitor. But what minor suit is he holding. That is the vital question and his early trump lead should through some light. You know suddenly that the simple reason could be not to allow you partner to indicate which minor suit he wants you to lead for undoubtedly a partner must be having two tricks in one of the minor suit which could sink the contract provided you can lead it in time.
The hypothetical count can tell you that the only distribution which allow the declarer to sneak through if the defense falters is a distribution of either 5-0-6-2 or 5-0-2-6. So is it clubs and diamonds? A study of your minor suit holding can be a good guide. If your partner had 6 diamonds to the ace and queen with a void in clubs, he would not have let the bidding die at the 5 level. Therefore, the diamonds must be the declarer's suit asking you to lead a club with east and south holding as under:
If you let a club, well done but if let a heart with the heart king you have done even better for partner could signal the suit preference for clubs by playing his lowest heart at trick one to save you from that brain fatigue in defense.
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West
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QJ4
K952
104
10972
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West
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(Dummy)
10872
Q63
K75
K64
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East
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6
AJ10874
82
AQ52
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South
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AK953
-
AQJ963
J8
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E S W N
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1H 2H 3H P
4H 4S P P
5H P P P
P P DBL ALL PASS
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