ACES ON BRIDGE

“Everyone is more or less mad on one point.” — Rudyard Kipling

Sometimes a simple statement of the result of a deal may not pique the reader’s curiosity. For example, if you were told that South had failed in four hearts here, your first reaction might be that declarer had managed to surrender a trick where no possibility of loss existed. In fact, the final result concealed a variety of good plays by both sides.

Against four hearts, West did well to lead the diamond two; East won with his king and switched to the club two, which had all the hallmarks of a singleton. South, no slouch, worked out that if he tackled trump, it would lead to immediate defeat. East would win with the trump ace, underlead his diamonds to put West in with the queen, and take a club ruff.

So South found a good counter. After winning the club switch, he played the spade king, ace and 10, on which he threw his losing diamond from hand. This was a classic scissors coup, and East was forced to win the spade 10 with the jack. With no hope now of putting his partner in to collect a club ruff, East led a fourth round of spades. The potential ruff-and-discard was useless to South, and he was forced to ruff high. He could not tackle trumps from dummy, so he had to lead out a top trump to East’s ace. Now a fifth round of spades meant West’s trump nine was promoted into a trick, and the contract had to fail by one.

ANSWER: There are still some advocates of the theory of the “free bid,” where a raise in competition promises more than would be the case had the opponents passed, since you were not forced to bid. Do not believe this; you might pass two diamonds with a minimum hand containing bad trumps plus defensive values in their suit (if, for example, you had the doubleton diamond queen instead of the club queen). But not here: bid two hearts, happily.