aces on bridge

“The devil watches all opportunities.”

— William Congreve

Follow the play in today’s deal carefully — there will be a question at the end of the report. South first forced to game, then took control and used Blackwood to drive to six spades. When dummy came down, South saw that he had two possible losers; but the best plan to avoid a club loser would be to establish dummy’s long hearts.

So South won the club lead, led a heart to the king and ace, won the diamond return and drew one round of trumps with the ace.

Declarer now cashed dummy’s remaining top heart and ruffed a third heart with a high trump. When hearts split 4-2, declarer led his small trump to dummy’s 10, putting the lead in dummy to allow him to ruff hearts for a second time.

The second ruff established dummy’s last heart; only now could South could afford to draw West’s last trump. South now led a diamond to dummy’s ace and cashed dummy’s last heart, pitching his remaining club loser.

South had his 12 tricks; could he or the defense have done differently — or better? First, West had a blind lead, but a diamond would have worked out better in disrupting the entries to dummy. Second, and key to the defense, was that West needed to give count in hearts at trick two, letting East duck his ace. That has the effect of preventing the establishment of the hearts. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself !

ANSWER: Which heart should you lead? It looks like declarer has four spades and no real extra shape in the minors, so if anyone is short in hearts, it will be dummy. If dummy is short in hearts, leading the king then working out whether to shift to clubs or continue hearts seems like a good idea.