The margin between victory and defeat in a given hand is often razor-thin. For example, take this deal from the 1983 Vanderbilt Team championship.

When Norman Kay and Edgar Kaplan held the North-South cards, they wound up in five hearts doubled on the sequence shown, and West led the queen of spades, ruffed by declarer.

Kaplan played a low diamond to the jack at trick two, won by East with the queen. East returned a trump to South’s ace, and another diamond was won by East’s eight. Back came a second trump to the king, and Kaplan ruffed the diamond seven with dummy’s last trump. Next came a spade ruff followed by two more trumps, producing this position:

Kaplan now played his last trump, forcing West to part with a club. Declarer thereupon discarded dummy’s jack of spades, forcing East to also discard a club in order to keep the ace of diamonds. Kaplan then led a club to the queen and took the last three tricks with the Q-A-7 to make the contract.

Of course, all the cards had to be perfectly placed, and the timing also had to be precisely right for the double squeeze to succeed. But coincidences like this seem to occur quite often when there’s a good helmsman at the wheel.

Tomorrow: What can defeat me?

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