ACES ON BRIDGE

“He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.” — Lao Tzu

The most challenging defense of the week from the U.S. Women’s Trials in 1997 came Lisa Berkowitz’s way. Put yourself in the East seat and see what you think.

You are defending against four spades after North has opened a multi two diamonds to show a weak two in hearts or spades, and South has jumped directly to four spades, to play. Partner leads the diamond king, and when you play the diamond queen, she continues with the diamond five. Your jack holds the trick as declarer follows with the four and 10 — over to you.

I do not know how to resolve the problem here. But it seems as if partner has led the middle from her remaining three small diamonds, in a position where the size of the card could be argued to be suit preference. Given that she had a choice of small cards, logic implies that her leading the highest of the small diamonds would ask for a heart ruff, and the low card would have called for a club.

Assuming partner might have shifted to a singleton heart at trick two, there is at least a case for the winning defense of shifting to a trump. Berkowitz did this and, not surprisingly, generated a game swing as a result, since in the other room West had led a top diamond and shifted to a heart at trick two, trying to cut dummy off from the hearts. As you can see, this was very much the wrong moment for that play.

ANSWER: Hearts looks like the right place to play here, so the question is whether to bid two hearts, three hearts or four hearts. The latter would be wildly optimistic, and unilateral, since partner could always raise three hearts to four, if appropriate. Here, I think I would go low with a call of two hearts; your partner’s bidding and the opponent’s double are all danger signals.