AceS On briDge

“In life as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard.” — Theodore Roosevelt

This week’s deals all come from the 2016 European Championships held in Budapest, Hungary, in the scenic setting of a football stadium. The crowds were somewhat smaller than might have been the case at a soccer game, but one cannot have everything.

Host nation Hungary was on Vugraph on day one, and was somewhat fortunate to escape with a small pickup here instead of a large loss, when in one room Romania bought the contract in two spades by West, down a trick.

Meanwhile, in the other room after the auction shown here, where North’s second double simply showed extras with no clear call, the Romanian South took a flyer at three no-trump and bought a very suitable lie of the cards for his choice. Gabor Winkler led a low spade, and declarer won in hand and played a diamond, won by West’s ace.

South took the third round of spades in hand and led a diamond to the king, followed by the diamond jack. East, who had started with queen-fourth of diamonds, thoughtfully ducked it. That was curtains for declarer when the heart finesse was wrong, since he no longer had enough entries to hand to establish diamonds. Of course, with the sight of all four hands, we would all have unblocked the diamond jack under the ace at trick two, wouldn’t we?

(For the record, declarer could have recovered by taking the club finesse when in hand with the second spade, but his actual play made perfect sense; it just didn’t work.)

ANSWER: Your partner’s double calls for a diamond lead. It sounds like he has four or more decent diamonds and a possible entry on the side. Your choice is whether to lead the low diamond or the jack. Since you appear to have two possible entries on the side, I would lead the low diamond, just in case declarer has a singleton honor.