ACES On BRIDGE

“The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum.”

— Havelock Ellis

The finals of the Yeh Bros teams event (with a prize of $100,000 going to the winners) was between two North American teams, ones that included Canadians, Poles and Dutchmen. Eric Kokish’s team led all the way and won fairly comfortably, but here is a swing created almost out of nowhere for the team captained by Jacek Pszczola, known to the world as Pepsi for fairly obvious reasons.

Both tables played three spades on a low diamond lead. Both declarers put in the eight, and both Easts (Michal Nowosadzki and Fred Gitelman) false-carded with the queen! Nicely done by both Easts. In each case, declarer won the ace, but maybe the declarer for the Kokish team took his eye off the ball, knowing he was comfortably placed.

He played a top trump, and Jacek Kalita, who had led the diamond seven (second from three), won the spade ace to play a second diamond, the five. Declarer put in dummy’s 10, and Nowosadzki won to play a trump, then got in with the club king to cash out his side’s heart tricks for down one.

For the Pepsi team, Eric Greco did not relax at trick two. He played the heart queen from hand, and when a club came through, he finessed the queen. Back came a trump to the king and ace, and a diamond switch. He went up with the king to play a second heart and now could not be stopped from ruffing a heart in dummy for his ninth trick.

That was five well-earned IMPs for Pepsi’s team.

ANSWER: I’d be inclined to bid two diamonds now, mainly to try to keep the auction open in case partner has a good hand or can produce delayed heart support. I’d guess the 5-2 heart fit might be our most likely game, but if partner has a singleton heart, two diamonds feels like the safest part-score.