ACES ON BRIDGE

“She should have died hereafter.” — William Shakespeare

Michelle Brunner, of Manchester, England, who died far too young a few years ago, achieved something no other player has done before or since, when she won the International Bridge Press Association’s Best Defense of the year in consecutive years.

You may want to play the East cards and cover up the West and South hands to test yourself before reading on. West led the heart jack, which was ducked in dummy and taken by your king. How do you plan to defeat four spades?

If you look at all four hands now, you may decide that it still looks impossible to set the game. But at trick two, Brunner found the diabolical switch to the club nine! Put yourself in declarer’s shoes. The nine looked for all the world like a singleton, so in order to reduce the risk of a ruff, South played the ace and another spade. West won with the king and continued with a second club. Quite understandably, declarer finessed; now East won her king and gave her partner a club ruff to beat the superficially unbeatable game.

Note that normal play and defense would have seen declarer make her contract easily. Not only did Brunner have to have the imagination to spot the possibility, but she also needed to paint a false picture for declarer. And, of course, she had to find the rest of the cards lying the way she wanted.

The real world doesn’t always work that way, as we all know, but today the stars aligned perfectly.

ANSWER: The phrase “it goes without saying” is almost redundant, especially at bridge. Here, it almost goes without saying that when you have game-forcing values facing an opening bid, you should normally respond in your longest suit. Exceptions come when your second suit is a major and of much better quality than your minor. That is emphatically not the case here, so bid two clubs.