ACES ON BRIDGE

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” — Sherlock Holmes

Since the Spring North American Bridge Championships are taking place this week in Kansas City, Missouri, I shall be writing up some of the best hands from last year’s tournament in Reno, Nevada.

In today’s deal, from the second qualifying session of the Kay Platinum Pairs, David Grainger demonstrated some neat declarer-play skills.

He could overcall two hearts to show six hearts and a decent hand, after which North made a slightly pushy call to drive to game. (A simple raise or cue-bid raise might have been enough.)

The defenders would have prevailed had they led and continued trumps, but West can hardly be criticized for kicking off with a top club.

Grainger ruffed this and read the clubs as being 6-2.

He decided that his best chance would be to find East with four cards in each major. So at trick two, he crossed to the spade king, then ruffed a second club and played the spade ace, spade queen and another spade, overruffing West’s three with the nine.

Now Grainger ruffed a third club as East discarded a diamond. (Ruffing in with the jack or 10 would have let declarer pitch a diamond and take a trump finesse later.) He next led a diamond to the ace and advanced a fourth club to ensure he could take two more trump tricks, no matter what East did.

Declarer ended up with 10 tricks: three spades, a ruff in dummy, five trumps in hand and the diamond ace.

ANSWER: The form of scoring and vulnerability might affect your answer here. In pairs or teams, one tends to make the obvious lead, from length of five cards or better, or from a four-card suit headed by an attractive sequence. In pairs, the objective is not to blow a trick from a vulnerable four-card suit. Here, I would lead a diamond, not a heart, and my second choice would be the spade nine.