aces on bridge

“The awful daring of a moment’s surrender.” — T.S. Eliot

In today’s deal, three no-trump would be the easiest game to make, since you have nine fast winners. However, you would appear to have excellent chances of overtricks in four hearts after a top spade lead.

South should win the spade ace and commence drawing trumps. The play would be straightforward if trumps broke 3-2: Declarer would draw them all, then play on diamonds.

But when West shows out on the second round of hearts, South must change tack.

Instead, South must turn his attention to diamonds immediately, leaving dummy’s last trump as a bulwark against the enemy’s spades. The opponents are welcome to take their two top diamonds and one diamond ruff.

Not surprisingly, West continues the force on declarer when he wins the first diamond. South must ruff, but then can knock out the second top diamond. The next spade ruff leaves him with one fewer trump than East, but declarer simply leads a third diamond, allowing East to ruff in. Now whether East plays back a club, spade or trump, declarer has the rest.

Note that if South draws all of East’s trumps at once, the defenders would force him on winning the first diamond. They could then take the rest of their spades when they regained the lead. South would go down in similar fashion even if he drew only three rounds of trumps. The same defense would mean that South would run out of trumps before he could set up the diamond trick he needed for his game.

ANSWER: The opponents’ auction suggests they have few values to spare. Should you lead aggressively with a club intermediate, or the top of a doubleton diamond, or go passive with a spade from your four small? I’m going to go passive here, worried that a club or diamond lead could cost the setting trick too easily. The spade two seems like the right card here.