ACES ON BRIDGE

“(Sunday) should be different from another day . ... There may be no relaxation, but there should be no levity.” — Samuel Johnson

Today’s deal saw a fine example of premature euphoria being punished. In my experience, there are two common reasons for players failing to find plays they should. These come when things appear to be going so well that they do not consider what might go wrong, or when things are going so badly that they cannot imagine how they might recover from the seemingly hopeless position.

Today, South reached three notrump without either player having significantly overbid. But on a low heart lead, the outlook did not appear very promising. South nevertheless made the right play when he put up the heart queen. With the heart queen doubleton, there was no advantage to playing low from dummy and forcing a high honor. Meanwhile, putting up the queen would pay off if West had underled the ace-king.

When the heart queen held, South relaxed and cashed dummy’s top clubs, then came to the diamond ace and took his remaining top club before leading a second diamond to dummy’s queen and being disgusted by the result. At that point, the contract could not be made since the diamonds were dead.

The winning line is to cash dummy’s club winners, then lead the diamond king, on which you unblock your own 10 before crossing to the diamond ace and taking the club queen. Now the 4-1 diamond break becomes apparent, and your unblock in diamonds allows you to finesse against West and run nine winners.

ANSWER: There is no certainty that dummy will have any ability to ruff clubs — or indeed that dummy will be able to ruff successfully at all; your partne may be able to overruff.

So it seems premature to lead a trump at trick one; you will surely have time to shift to a trump later.

I prefer a lead of the heart 10 to the spade ace, as this is less likely to cost a trick.