ACES ON BRIDGE

“I see the better things, and approve, but I follow worse.”

— Ovid

Today’s deal from last year’s Gold Coast Congress in Brisbane, Australia, was compared to a Euclid theorem. Get it right, and the world would be your oyster. Get it wrong, and you might be told to find a different game.

At one table, East thought he had a one-diamond opener, and that kept his opponents out of the marginal game — they climbed only to two spades, while three no-trump in the other room came home in comfort.

But in the featured match, both tables reached four spades. One table did not put up much of a fight by leading the club six. The other room gave declarer a real challenge on the auction shown. After East has opened a weak two or three in diamonds, your task is to bring home the game on the lead of the diamond jack, followed by two further rounds of diamonds.

It is all too easy when I give it to you as a problem — I hope. Simply discard a heart loser on the third diamond, then win the heart return, ruff a heart, finesse in spades and draw trumps. At this point, the only remaining challenge is to negotiate the clubs. Since you now know East began with six diamonds and only three major-suit cards, he must have four clubs. So you should finesse against East and rack up your game.

Would you care to speculate on how many pairs out of 35 made four spades on the lead of the diamond jack? Would you believe only nine? Maybe the deal is harder than I realized.

ANSWER: Your partner is probably relatively short in diamonds, but he chose not to act. I’d guess he has a balanced 8-10 count, and he surely does not have five spades, so leading spades would likely set up the suit for the opponents and get you ruffs with trump tricks. The choice is between clubs and hearts, and I vote for clubs.