Dubious Logic

Single v Double

There are strange people who play bridge. Yes, I expect you knew that already, but I have in mind one particular species that few sympathise with; the double-dummy enthusiast. Those of you who take bridge publications no doubt skip past the diagrams that contain no auctions and display all four hands. Usually these problems have an unreal air, partly as a result of stylistic economy. Generally, you won't see a suit such A982 unless each of the cards has a separate function in the analysis, in my example there are three 'pieces', a solver would have to be suspicious if the suit were A972 instead – that would indicate that there were four lines with different play.

Of course double-dummy problems do occur at the table but the hands players write on the back of napkins tend to be 'single-dummy' – as in real play, with only one set of thirteen cards exposed. Try this hand at single first;

EW Vul.
Dealer N

Maybe you or your partner should have bid four no-trump but it's too late for that, North leads the king of hearts. You win and play ace and king of trumps, North surprisingly starting with two, South discarding a heart. With two entries, one in spades and one via the club eight, there appear to be several lines. Endplay North in spades – singleton queen would do or South failing to rise from Q10x – or diamonds. With North likely to be 1-4-6-2, if South has only one diamond between the 5 and the king or just the 76, then North cannot avoid the lead. I think low spade to the ace (duck North's queen) and back with a diamond, covering South's card may be the better of these but it's close.

Sadly (for my partner and I) neither of these lines worked, the full hand was,

As you can see, you can duck neither spades nor diamonds to North so does that mean there is no route to success on this hand? Not to the double-dummy analyst. You can guess what happens next – can you see the line to eleven tricks on the hand above?

Published Saturday 2.Jun.2001