To defend well is difficult, but certainly not impossible. It’s mostly a matter of gathering clues available from the bidding and/or play, and taking advantage of them.

Assume you’re East and win partner’s queen-of-hearts lead with the ace. What should you return? Considering all the factors, your best return is a low diamond! If you make this play, the contract goes down one.

Declarer wins in his hand and leads a trump. Following your line of defense, partner rises with the ace and returns a diamond. You win with the ace and play a diamond, and partner ruffs to score the setting trick.

How can you be expected to find this extraordinary defense without seeing all four hands? Actually, it makes a lot of sense — if you stop to reason things out.

To begin with, you should conclude that you have virtually no hope of defeating the contract unless partner has the ace or king of trump. You therefore assume that he has a trump trick coming. You also know from the queen-of-hearts lead that partner does not have the king, so that a heart return is futile.

Next, you know from South’s three-diamond bid that he has either three or four diamonds. If South raised with four diamonds, the best defense is to play the ace and another diamond. But if South raised with three diamonds, the best defense is to lead a low diamond at trick two.

To solve this problem, you make the reasonable assumption that if South has four diamonds, your partner, who is presumed to hold the trump ace or king, would have led his singleton diamond. Therefore, you say to yourself, partner must have two diamonds, so the best chance to beat the contract lies in a low diamond return at trick two.

Tomorrow >> Famous Hand.

— Steve Becker