ACES ON BRIDGE

“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.” — George Orwell

Third hand high is all very well, but sometimes you need to know when not to follow the rules. This board came at the end of a roundrobin match in the 2016 European Championships last year and saw both English pairs doing extremely well. It cemented their victory in the match.

In one room, Andrew Robson, North, reached three no-trump. West decided he had enough to double this, since his partner had doubled one club. Robson ended with an overtrick after East unluckily decided that it would be a good moment for the lead of the spade queen. (He wasn’t entirely mistaken: If declarer had held the bare jack of spades, or two small spades, instead of the doubleton spade jack, he might have been proved right.)

In the other room, the auction was as shown in the diagram. The Hackett brothers were on defense, and Justin Hackett, having shown a shapely but limited takeout hand with his two-club call, led a low spade. I think Jason Hackett did very well to refrain from playing the queen, instead putting in the eight, forcing the 10. When declarer ran the clubs and led a heart toward his hand, the defenders had arranged to keep their red aces, and each of them had retained three spades.

Jason could win his heart ace and shift to the spade queen, pinning dummy’s jack and allowing the suit to run on defense. So they defeated the contract by one trick, for a 14IMP swing.

ANSWER: The three-heart call may be natural, with 5-4 shape, or bidding out values, indirectly looking for no-trump, but without half a stopper in diamonds. If North had jack-third or queen-doubleton in diamonds, he might have bid three diamonds here. Since no-trump is not in the picture now, I would jump to five clubs to suggest a hand that has been improved by the action, indirectly suggesting short diamonds.