ACES ON BRIDGE

“The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.”

— Winston Churchill

Today is my final deal from Kit Woolsey’s excellent book, “The Language of Bridge.” This is certainly a very hard problem — and it involves a carding convention that may not be used by all my readers: third and lowest leads. Bear that caveat in mind while reading the deal.

You sit East, defending against four hearts, after South has jumped to game at his second turn. When your partner leads the spade queen, dummy plays low and you contribute the 10.

Your partner now continues with the two, and when dummy plays low again, you take the nine as declarer follows suit.

It seems natural to shift to a diamond. But partner carefully chose his lowest spade at trick two. Not only must partner own the club ace for this play, but he also cannot have the diamond king or ace, or he would need a diamond shift.

So what is going on? Answer: West needs to know the right time to take his club ace. If declarer advances a club from his hand, partner won’t have the count in the suit, so he won’t know what to do. So you must give him the count yourself by leading the club two (playing third and lowest spot-card leads). Your partner would expect you to lead a small club with an odd number and a high club with an even number.

West will win his ace at once if you lead the club two; but if you lead the club nine, he will duck, playing declarer to have the hand shown, but with two small clubs and only six hearts.

ANSWER: When you have decent values in this position, you should consider giving false preference to two hearts. The logic is that the 5-2 heart fit may play better than a possible 4-3 club fit. But more importantly, when partner has extras, you want to keep the auction open to let him try for game. With the club queen instead of the ace, you might pass two clubs.