Sometimes you have to look a gift horse in the mouth. That was the lesson of a hand Paul Laliberte and I played in an OKBridge tournament last week. We were sitting North-South, with South dealing and no one vulnerable:

NORTH (Kaplan)
♠ 10 8 4 2
♥ 5
♦ A K 8 4
♣ 10 9 8 5

WEST                                       EAST
♠ A Q 6 5 3                             ♠ K J
♥ A 10 7                                  ♥ 9 8 6 4 2
♦ J 7 2                                     ♦ 10 9 6 5 3
♣ Q 3                                       ♣ A

SOUTH (Laliberte)
♠ 9 7
♥ K Q J 3
♦ Q
♣ K J 7 6 4 2

The bidding proceeded as follows:

South          West          North          East
1 ♣            1 ♠           2 ♣             2 ♠
3 ♣            3 ♠           Pass             Pass
4 ♣           All Pass

Opening lead: ♦ 2

Now, you may wonder why West didn’t lead the ♠A. On the opening lead it’s usually a bad idea to play the ace when you don’t have the king behind it, because you may be giving the opponents a free trick. Granted, playing spades on Tricks One and Two would have worked in this case.

Seeing the diamond lead, I thought, “This is fantastic. Paul will win with the queen in his hand, lead the ♥K, eventually ruff a heart on the board, and have two more diamond tricks.”

Paul was thinking deeper. He realized that if he cashed the ♦Q and led a heart, the defenders would win with the ace, cash two spades and set us with the ♣A. Therefore he won with the ♦A and threw a spade on the ♦K.

When Paul subsequently led a club, East won with the ace. The defenders cashed a spade, but Paul ruffed the second spade lead, cashed his ♣K, conceded a heart and claimed. Our score of +130 gave us 2.29 international match points. As a result, we placed 21st in the 88-pair event and earned a hard-won .37 of a matchpoint.

So the next time you think you’ve been gifted extra tricks, play carefully and count your losers first.