Bridge

Opening lead — queen of spades. Optimism is a required trait in bridge, but while it is necessary for consistent success, it must be tempered with a degree of pessimism. To blindly assume that everything will always go well is sure to cost many points that could have been saved over a period of time.

Take this case, for example. After the dummy came down, South thought he would make six clubs in a walk. Indeed, if the trumps were divided 2-2 and the diamonds 4-3, he would score all tricks.

So, without giving the matter further thought, he won the spade lead and cashed the K-A of clubs. When clubs failed to break, South carried on with his initial plan — discard two hearts on dummy’s diamonds, ruff a diamond to establish dummy’s fifth card in the suit and eventually ruff two spades in dummy and discard another on the good diamond.

But when he played the A-K-Q of diamonds, discarding the 4-Q of hearts, West ruffed the third diamond and returned a spade. Declarer ruffed in dummy, but, with the diamonds breaking 5-2, he could not avoid losing a spade at the end for down one.

Once South discovered that he had a trump loser, he should have taken the time to reformulate his initial plan, which would no longer work if the diamonds failed to behave. There was nothing wrong with playing the A-K-Q of diamonds, but rather than discarding two hearts, he should have kept the queen of hearts and discarded a spade instead.

This would have allowed him to keep the heart finesse in reserve in case the diamonds didn’t break, and when East later turned up with the heart king, the slam would still have been made.

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