Bridge Puzzle

Opening lead: four of diamonds.

The defenders would find their task much more difficult if they had no signals to guide each other to the best method of defence. One of the more valuable signals available to them is known as the “trump echo”.

When declarer is playing in a suit contract, it is often critical for a defender to know how many trumps his partner has. This problem can in many cases be solved by making use of the trump echo. 

Here’s how it works: Let’s say a defender has the 6-4-2 of trumps. To indicate that he has an odd number of trumps — usually three — he plays the four the first time trumps are led and the two the next time. (He would follow the same procedure if he were trumping a trick, ruffing with the four first.) As a corollary, if a defender plays the two first and later plays the four, he indicates holding an even number of trumps.

The trump echo can be very useful, as illustrated by today’s deal. West led the four of diamonds, which East had no trouble reading as a singleton., Accordingly, East took his ace and returned the deuce, ruffed by West with the four.

West returned a low club, East’s king losing to the ace. Declarer then led the king of trumps, West playing the two as East won with the ace. Without the trump echo, East would have had to guess what to do next. 

If declarer — who had opened and rebid hearts — had started with six  hearts, the only remaining hope was that West had the club queen, in which case East should return a club. But if South started with only five hearts, West could trump another diamond.

West’s trump echo — he had ruffed with the four and then played the deuce — made the problem easy to solve. East returned a diamond, knowing full well that his partner had another trump, and the contract went down one.

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