ACES ON BRIDGE

“Busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wallpaper.”

— O. Henry

Larry Cohen has written material for players at all levels.

In one of his intermediate books, he discusses card reading, and he gives this example of the theme.

In fourth seat, North gets to open one club. After some exuberant bidding, South ends up in three notrump and receives the lead of the diamond two.

East puts up the diamond king and returns a low diamond. Declarer has no real choice but to try the queen, more in hope than expectation.

When it holds, declarer can count on five club tricks, one diamond and two spades. The ninth trick will have to come from hearts.

Declarer can run the clubs first, ending in hand, and then lead a low heart toward dummy’s king. When West plays low, declarer has to guess ... or does he?

Fortunately, at this point in the play, he can confidently expect 4-4 diamonds. If that were not the case, West would win the heart ace and cash out, or East would be sitting with a bunch of winners to cash.

So let’s assume the defense can take only three diamond tricks. If declarer gets hearts wrong, he will go down; but did you remember the bidding? East dealt and passed. He is already inferentially marked with the diamond ace-king and at least one spade honor (West would surely have led from the queenjack of spades). If East also held the heart ace, he would have opened the bidding. So, declarer should guess correctly and put up dummy’s heart king for his ninth trick.

ANSWER: You can infer that declarer has five hearts, with probably close to a 2-5-3-3 shape. Opener has only five spades and at most two hearts, while your partner is maybe 3-3-3-4. I would lead a club to play for ruffs, thinking that I should be able to score my heart queen later on in the hand.