Other articles by Steve Becker:

Bridge : Shadow on the horizon Bridge : Bidding quiz Bridge : It's so easy when you know how Bridge : Zounds! Bridge : Enlisting the enemy's aid Bridge : Famous hand Bridge : Slow and steady wins the race Bridge : Test your play Bridge : Dangerous waters ahead Bridge : Sylvia misapplies a rule

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This deal occurred in a masters pair championship. As often happens, the results at the various tables differed strikingly from each other.

There was nothing complicated about the play at most of these tables. West led the king of hearts and continued with a heart after East signaled with the eight or nine.

Declarer ruffed, cashed the A-K of diamonds and then finessed the queen of spades. East won with the king and returned a club. South naturally declined to finesse because he could avoid a club loser by taking the ace and playing three rounds of spades, discarding a club from dummy.

However, South would not have made the contract if the defense had been sharper at trick one, when East should have overtaken the king of hearts and returned a club. Had he done this, declarer would have gone down one.

It is not really an extraordinary play for East to overtake the king of hearts and shift to a club. He knows from the bidding that West's heart overcall was almost surely based on a five-card suit, which in turn gives declarer only one heart. If it develops that declarer has either no hearts or two hearts, overtaking with the ace does no harm.

East should count on the ace of hearts as one trick for the defense, and on the king of spades as a second trick, leaving the club suit as the primary hope of providing a third trick.

East therefore cannot afford to adopt a passive attitude at trick one by allowing West to win the king of hearts. Once it has been decided that the best chance for the setting trick lies in clubs, it is clearly more advantageous that the club lead at trick two come from East rather than West.