Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian-born biochemist who isolated vitamin C, wrote, "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought."
That sort of sums up bridge experts. An expert and nonexpert may see the same cards, but the expert thinks the right thought much more often than the less capable player.
This deal is a good case in point. How would you try to bring home your spade game after West leads the club king to your ace?
South might have rebid two no-trump. Note that three no-trump has nine top tricks, but it is always difficult to diagnose when no-trump will be as good as or better than a major-suit fit.
Clearly, you must make use of dummy's delightful diamonds.
An inexperienced player would immediately draw trumps, then try to run the diamonds. If his luck was in, he would collect an overtrick. But here he would come up a trick short.
The expert checks out the trump split first, by cashing two honors from his hand. If an opponent shows out on the second spade, the expert would play a trump to the ace on the board, return to his hand with a diamond, remove the missing trump, and hope that the diamonds run.
But when both opponents follow throughout in spades, South cashes his diamond king, plays a diamond to dummy's ace, and ruffs the diamond eight high in his hand. Then he leads a trump to the ace on the board and cashes the queen and 10 of diamonds, discarding losers from his hand. His 10 tricks are five spades, four diamonds and one club.
That sort of sums up bridge experts. An expert and nonexpert may see the same cards, but the expert thinks the right thought much more often than the less capable player.
This deal is a good case in point. How would you try to bring home your spade game after West leads the club king to your ace?
South might have rebid two no-trump. Note that three no-trump has nine top tricks, but it is always difficult to diagnose when no-trump will be as good as or better than a major-suit fit.
Clearly, you must make use of dummy's delightful diamonds.
An inexperienced player would immediately draw trumps, then try to run the diamonds. If his luck was in, he would collect an overtrick. But here he would come up a trick short.
The expert checks out the trump split first, by cashing two honors from his hand. If an opponent shows out on the second spade, the expert would play a trump to the ace on the board, return to his hand with a diamond, remove the missing trump, and hope that the diamonds run.
But when both opponents follow throughout in spades, South cashes his diamond king, plays a diamond to dummy's ace, and ruffs the diamond eight high in his hand. Then he leads a trump to the ace on the board and cashes the queen and 10 of diamonds, discarding losers from his hand. His 10 tricks are five spades, four diamonds and one club.