ACES ON BRIDGE

“Most people are on the world, not in it — having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” — John Muir

Today’s deal represents a slight variation of a hand that came up in the quarterfinals of the World Junior Teams Championships. The Polish team, spearheaded by Michal Klukowski and Justyna Zmuda, won the junior title. They have been playing regularly for the open and women’s teams, respectively, for the last few years. This deal resulted in a big swing for Poland.

To focus on the problem, look just at the auction, together with the West and North cards. You lead a heart against six diamonds, won perforce in dummy. Declarer now plays the diamond king, which goes to the nine and declarer’s six. Plan the defense. When you have decided, look at the full deal.

If you duck the first trump, what should declarer do? He has two sensible approaches: One is to take the diamond nine at face value and play to ruff out clubs — which will be necessary if both minors break badly. But if declarer does that, and if the cards lie as in the diagram, East ruffs the second club and defeats the slam. If instead you win the diamond ace, declarer cannot go wrong.

(For the record: In real life, the diamond nine was singleton, with East holding 4-7-1-1 shape. When the diamond nine appeared, West ducked, and declarer correctly went after clubs at trick three, successfully ruffing out the suit. Had he played a second trump himself, the defense would have played a third trump and forced declarer to guess clubs.)

ANSWER: You could simply lead spades, the suit you have bid and raised, but it feels more important to me to try to get hearts going at once. If playing third and low, I would lead the four; if playing fourth-highest, a high spot may be hard to read, so I would lead the two.