In many deals, it is more dangerous for declarer to have one defender on lead rather than the other. In such cases, declarer should try to organize the play so that the dangerous opponent cannot gain the lead. Today’s deal features an unusual application of this strategy.

West led the king of clubs against four hearts, and South saw immediately that there was a possibility he could lose three spades and a diamond. Given the bidding, it was highly likely that West had the ace of spades, so it was imperative to keep East from gaining the lead and returning a spade through the king.

The most obvious way to avoid three spade losers was to establish dummy’s diamond suit, but if East had the guarded diamond queen, declarer might lose four tricks before the diamonds could be utilized.

After pondering his options, South found the solution: He allowed West’s king of clubs to hold the first trick! West could do no better than lead another club to dummy’s ace at trick two, on which South discarded a diamond. Two rounds of trump were followed by the A-K of diamonds and a diamond ruff, establishing dummy’s two remaining diamonds. Declarer then crossed to dummy with a trump and discarded two spades on the J-5 of diamonds to finish with an overtrick.

Note that the same line of play would succeed against a 3-1 trump break, declarer simply ruffing the third diamond high before crossing to dummy with a trump to cash the established diamonds.

By ducking the opening club lead, South substantially increased his chances of making the contract. In effect, he substituted a nonexistent club loser for a potential diamond loser. It was an application of the avoidance principle carried to an extreme.

Tomorrow: Top-notch defense.

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