ACES ON BRIDGE

“Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

This week's deals were all played in the 2007 Cavendish Pairs in Henderson, Nevada, a multiple pairs event scored along cross-imp lines, after a two-day teams event. The pairs were auctioned off before the tournament began, and the major prizes went to the “owners” of the pairs, not to the pairs themselves.

As West, you overcall your righthand opponent's strong no-trump with a bid of two diamonds, showing diamonds and a major. The next hand simply raises to three notrump, and it is your lead.

You are going to attack in spades, but rather than guessing whether to lead the normal-looking spade 10 or an eccentric queen in the hope of pinning a short-suit jack, you ought to lay down the ace. You hope to set up four spade tricks to go with the diamond ace, and as you have an outside entry, you need not retain your spade ace. Instead, you can use it to get a look at dummy before you decide how to continue.

If king-third appears in dummy, you press on with the spade queen, squashing declarer's jack. You come under no pressure on the run of the clubs, and the contract is defeated. Had jack-third or king-doubleton come down on table, you would have continued with a small card. Of course, this tactic could have gone wrong, say, if declarer had two spade stoppers and partner two small spades, along with a sure entry, but even then, the defense might have failed if your diamond ace were knocked out early.

The spade ace lead was duly found at the table by Curtis Cheek.