As we learned in Lesson 12, notrump is a race. Declarer tries to establish enough cashable tricks before the defense can establish theirs. This is sometimes made tougher by pitfalls we need to watch out for. The pitfall in this example: spots that ain't so hot.

Sometimes a pitfall can be as tough to spot as snow on a polar bear. It nearly was for this South who had to be very thoughtful to make 3NT. If South had allowed inertia to rule, he would have been set.

Having had to win the opening lead in dummy, if South continues with a small diamond toward the K J, one of his honors will be crunched by West's lone A, forcing him to lose the lead one time too many. Some might guess that this is merely an unfortunate lie of the cards. It is unlucky, but some bad luck can be overcome by diagnosis, also known as going with the odds.

Notice that South owns six cashable tricks from the outset (two spades and four hearts). That defines his road ahead: establish three more winners before losing the lead twice. He can afford to lose the lead once since the defenders can't run any set of winners before driving out the second spade stopper or the one and only club stopper. If the former happens, it's curtains. Three spade tricks, the A and two top clubs equal down two.

The diamond suit will provide all three of the needed winners as long as none of the honors fall victim to a singleton ace. The question I hear most often in circumstances like these is: How do you know?

Answer: You don't know for sure that someone holds a singleton ace and you don't need to. You do need to see the potential hazard and plan around it. You are alerted to this planning need when you notice that your diamond spots are not so hot.

Presume that the opening lead is from a five-card suit. If this presumption turns out to be wrong, we're thrilled to have West own one winner fewer. Thirteen minus five leaves eight. West holds eight unknown cards (assumed).

East is then assumed to have two spades, placing him with eleven non-spade cards. With these numbers, the odds favor East to have more diamonds than West.*

With West more likely to be short in diamonds, we can envision an easy and safe play to find out whether the dreaded distribution is as it actually is - a singleton A in the West hand.

South comes to his hand with a heart winner and leads a small diamond toward dummy. Voila! Only one diamond loser. Notice that it does no harm to play this way when the diamonds are 3-2, so we might as well give ourselves the extra edge.

If East started with A 10 9 x, or if anyone began with all five of them, we're doomed anyway, so we don't bother playing for either of those.

Also note that ducking the opening lead is more than a little dangerous and violates the requirement of being able to afford to lose the lead only once. Top notch Easts will switch to clubs, allowing you to win the a round in that suit but retaining a small club in the West hand as an entry to East. They will then run the suit on you when they get in with the A. Four clubs, a spade, and a diamond still set you two.

The Bottom Line

1. Apply all the pointers of Lesson 12.
2. When you are missing high spot cards, envision "unlucky" lies of the cards that you can maneuver around.
3. When your spots are not so hot, review the auction and diagnose the opening lead to figure out who is more likely to hold key missing cards.

*Ratio: 11 to 8. Percentages: 58% West, 42% East (rounded). In the beginning, don't worry about computing odds so precicely. It's frequently enough to recognize that one player is more likely than the other to have a particular holding.

Further reading on this topic:

How To Play A Bridge Hand William S. Root.
Crown Publishers. New York. 1990.
ISBN 0-517-57457-8.