BRIDGE

She had winners in her hand

If you list the 100 greatest-ever bridge players, few will be women. You may draw your own conclusions for the reasons or read books on the subject.

The person who had collected the most World Bridge Federation masterpoints for women was Dorothy Hayden-Truscott, who lived in New York City and died in 2006. She won four world championships as a player and one as a nonplaying captain. She is also one of only two women to have represented the United States in the Bermuda Bowl. (Helen Sobel was the other.)

Dorothy's favorite deal occurred while she was winning the 1967 Women's Board-a-Match Teams Championship. The six-heart contract suffers from certain drawbacks. In the cold light of day, despite having 12 points, North should have bid only four hearts at her second turn.

Dorothy won the diamond-jack lead with her ace, played a trump to dummy's queen and led a spade to her jack. West won with the ace and naively exited with her last heart.

Having three club losers, dummy's two spade winners were useless. Abandoning them, declarer cashed all of her red-suit winners. With one to go, East, dummy and West each held one club and three spades. Each defender thought that she retained sole control of spades.

On the final trump, dummy's club king was thrown. Still under the influence of an idee fixe, East discarded her club ace, so declarer's 9-8-4 of clubs won the last three tricks!

East should have realized that if South had started with two spades, West would have discarded one of hers.