BRIDGE with Bob Jones

North-South were playing an opening one no-trump range of 15-17. This was how South evaluated his hand. It wasn’t too long ago when no good player would even consider opening one notrump with the South hand, but today we see it more and more.

East played the encouraging five of diamonds to trick one, but West couldn’t read it. South, from a diamond holding of Q-4-3, might well have played the four to try and encourage a diamond continuation. West shifted to the jack of hearts, which was overtaken by partner’s queen and won with declarer’s ace. A club was led to dummy’s queen and a club came back to declarer’s 10 and West’s ace. A diamond continuation was out of the question now, as South needed the queen to make up his minimum of 15 points. Also, West did not know that declarer had started with six clubs, so he continued with another heart.

South now had nine tricks in the bag and he set out after a precious overtrick. He captured the heart with dummy’s king, crossed to his hand with the king of spades, and ran all of his clubs. West had to keep two spades or South could overtake the queen of spades with the ace and all of dummy’s spades would be good, so he came down to a singleton king of diamonds. South cashed his queen of spades and led a low diamond to West’s king, using West as a stepping stone to dummy’s ace of spades. The whole hand was a swindle by South, but a lovely one.