Keith Hanson, from Boca Raton, Florida, has been one of America’s great bridge teachers for many years. He is also an outstanding player. Hanson was East in today’s deal.
The deal is from a high-stakes rubber bridge game some years ago and the bidding employed in this game was not very sophisticated by today’s standards. It was, however, in line with the way people bid in the good old days. Many readers should recognize it. Against four spades, West cashed his three top hearts to get the defense off to a good start. West shifted to the jack of diamonds, won by declarer in hand with the ace.
South had to play the trump suit for no losers and the most likely way to do that was to find one of the defenders with a doubleton queen of spades. He could also easily handle a singleton queen in the West hand. South started by leading a spade to dummy’s ace and Hanson smoothly dropped the queen! What would you do? Declarer, as would we all, believed that Hanson had just played a singleton queen and that West started with four spades to the 10. South crossed back to his hand with the king of diamonds and led the nine of spades. He played low from dummy and was shocked to see Hanson win with his 10 to defeat the contract. Lovely play!
