Games: Bridge

There was an interesting psychological point on this deal from the Generali European Championships - one that might not have occurred to everyone. At the table I watched, North-South bid their way to a dubious Four Spades. (To give, and attempt to explain, the convoluted conventional auction would weary both me and the readers.) Werst led 2J and declarer took one or two early good views.

First, he won immediately with dummy's ace and led the !2 to the three, queen and 10. The appearance of the jack on the second round of trumps solved one of his problems, and West won the king with the ace. Now East was at a crossroads. It looks tempting to lead a low spade, does it not? If he had done so, however, declarer would almost certainly have guessed right, for - the critical point - no sensible player would lead a low spade from Q,x,x,x or Q,x,x when he could see J,x,x in dummy.

Realising this, East shrewdly returned a trump and left declarer to play the spades himself. And, perhaps naively assuming that this meant East did hold 4Q, South did indeed misguess the spades and so went one off.