ACES ON BRIDGE

“I never met any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.”

— Alexander Pope

One of the countries that is fast rising to prominence at the North American Bridge Championships is Turkey. Here is Turkey’s Zeynep Yilmaz at the 2014 Spring NABC in Dallas.

Against five clubs, West led the spade king, ruffed low in dummy. Yilmaz played a low club to the five, queen and six. Unless East had started with an unlikely doubleton club ace, declarer expected two trump losers; therefore, she would require the diamond king to be onside. But Yilmaz also expected a 4-2 diamond break, not only because that is the most likely distribution in abstract within the suit, but also because of West’s known six-card spade suit.

To come home in her game, she would need to be able to ruff the third round of diamonds with her club nine. Therefore, East had to hold the doubleton club ace, or West must have begun with the doubleton club jack.

When Yilmaz advanced the diamond jack, it was covered by the king and ace. Yilmaz now played a low trump from dummy. East could not afford to rise with the ace and return a trump, as that would give up a second trump trick in the process. So East followed with the 10, won by West with the jack. Whatever West returned would be won in dummy, and a diamond could safely be ruffed with the trump nine.

Note that, in theory, it doesn’t help West to unblock the trump jack under the queen, since declarer could change tack and ruff a diamond high before playing the second trump.

ANSWER: A double here by you is for takeout. Yes, you might have more shape or even more values than this for the call, but in any form of scoring, you want to get back into the auction when the opponents have found a fit at a low level. You hope that if your partner bids, he will have either a sixth spade or a second suit. If not, a 4-3 fit should play just fine.