ACES ON BRIDGE

“People say that life is the thing, but I enjoy reading.” — Logan Pearsall Smith

The defense have a number of tactics and strategies available to them in trumps — for example, the ruff and the uppercut. It is rare for one and the same defender to get an extra trick from both strategies, but today’s deal from the second qualifying session of the national Open Pairs at the Philadelphia Nationals showed the defenders scoring well by doing just that.

In third seat, South opened one spade — after all, most macho men believe in four-card majors in third seat! West overcalled two hearts without much enthusiasm, but pairs events require you to do this sort of thing, and North had an easy bid of two spades. How bad can it be to finish up at the two-level here? Plenty bad, as you’ll see.

West led a diamond to the 10 and queen, and East cashed his diamond ace and gave his partner a ruff. Now the heart ace and a heart to the king saw declarer run the club jack to West’s king. West cashed the heart queen, then led another heart. Dummy ruffed with the six, and East over-ruffed with the eight, forcing declarer to overruff with his jack.

South next cashed the club ace and ruffed the club queen in dummy. He then led dummy’s last trump to the queen and West’s ace. Now West led his last heart at trick 12, and East ruffed in with the 10. When declarer over-ruffed, West’s spade nine took the contract down three tricks for plus 300 and 90 percent of the available matchpoints.

ANSWER: It is difficult to know how to handle a hand like this. My view is that jumping to four hearts and forcing the opponents to make their decision at a higher level is likely to be the best approach. Had partner opened two spades instead, you might simply raise to three spades, since your trumps would be weaker and your defense higher.