Tips from Barnet Shenkin: Throwing Away a King

This article is part of a regular series from Scottish internationalist and leading player Barnet Shenkin, exploring fascinating hands, practical techniques and advanced bridge thinking.

Each article breaks down real deals from competition play, offering insights designed to help improving players strengthen their judgement, declarer play and defence.

Throwing away a king

From the OCBL online tournament in December:

♠ AT543

♥ 876

♦ 95

♣ J92

♠ KJ

♥ K932

♦ QJ86

♣ 1054

♠ 98762

♥ AQJT54

♦ K3

♣ —

♠ Q

♥ —

♦ AT742

♣ AKQ8763

West	North	East	South
			2♣ 1
Pass	3♣	3♥	4♥
Double	4♠	Pass	6♣
All Pass

¹ Natural, limited.

West made a good choice of a trump lead, and declarer played the nine from dummy.

What should East play?

Declarer is marked with a long club suit and almost certainly a heart void. The only chance for the defence is to take diamond tricks.

Declarer will clearly try to ruff diamonds in dummy. If he is 1=0=5=7, two ruffs will establish the suit. The king of diamonds has no value in this hand and should be jettisoned at trick one.

Declarer can then no longer obtain two diamond ruffs in dummy, as West will play a second trump.

Alas, the king of diamonds was not discarded and, when declarer later played a diamond from dummy, he could not be prevented from losing the trick to East.

At the other three tables where 6♣ was reached, West led a heart and declarer had no difficulty.

I remember, in my early days, a hand where Maurice Harrison-Gray, one of the most distinguished players in English bridge, discarded a king or ace to create an entry to partner’s hand to defeat 3NT.

This hand is in a very similar style.

A version of this article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of the IBPA and is republished with their kind permission.