BELLA VISTA — Maximum security

Card-reading -- the ability to figure out how the opponents' cards are divided based on bids and plays they have or haven't made --is a crucial element inthe play of many hands.

Consider this deal where West leads the king of spades, on which East plays the seven. West continues with the ace and another spade, East playing the six on the ace and the ten on dummy's nine.

South ruffs the third spade and does not have to think very hard to conclude that East has the missing queen of spades. It is inconceivable that East would play the 7-6-10 of spades, in that order, unless he also had the queen.

South's prospects therefore are extremely good at this point, provided he does not now fall into the trap of drawing trumps, cashing the ace of diamonds and then finessing the jack.

In the actual case, the jack of diamonds wouldlose to East's queen, and when declarer later attempted a club finesse, he would lose that also and finish down one. True, it would be unlucky for South to have both finesses fail -- the odds are 3-to-1 that one or both will succeed -- but that's the way the cookie sometimes crumbles.

However, if South takes advantage of his knowledge that East has the queen of spades, he can assure the contract in a perfectly simple way. After ruffing the third round of spades, he draws three rounds of trumps ending in dummy, leads the jack of spades and discards a club on it.

East takes the jack with the queen but is helpless. He must either return a club into dummy's A-Q-x or a diamond into dummy's KJ-x, and regardless of which he chooses, South acquires his 10th trick.

(c) 2009 King Features Synd., Inc.

Entertainment, Pages 21 on 10/28/2009

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