Opening lead: seven of hearts.

When you look at this deal, it is hard to see how declarer can fail to make three notrump after a heart lead. South wins the lead in his hand, loses the nine of spades to East’s queen, takes the heart return in his hand and continues spades.

West takes the ace and, say, returns a third heart. Declarer wins with dummy’s king, cashes the remaining spades, takes a successful diamond finesse and concedes the king of clubs to the ace to bring in nine tricks — three spades, three hearts, two diamonds and a club. It all seems rather cut and dried.

But that’s not the way it happened when the deal occurred in the 1988 Spingold Teams. Declarer won the opening heart lead with the ace and finessed the nine of spades, but East, David Berkowitz, ducked! When the nine held, South naturally repeated the finesse, losing the 10 to the queen.

As a result of East’s brilliant play, declarer was no longer able to utilise dummy’s spades. He won East’s heart return with dummy’s king, conceded a trick to the ace of spades and won the next heart, on which East showed out, with the queen.

A low diamond was now led toward dummy. When West did not produce the king and cash two heart tricks, it was clear he did not have that card. So South finessed dummy’s nine, hoping this would drive out the king. But East won with the 10 and returned a club, locking declarer in his hand.

South struggled awhile and eventually forced East to give him another trick to bring his total to seven, but this was small compensation for failing to make the contract.

East’s entry-killing duck of the first spade simply proved too much to overcome.

For details about local bridge events, go to the HK Contract Bridge Association website www.hkcba.org [1]