The Bridge Column

Today’s deal is from a tournament played in Turkey earlier this year. West was 12-year-old Ediz Akay, who had been playing bridge for just two months at the time this deal was played. His father, Sadik Akay, is a well-respected player in Turkey.

South made an aggressive, but reasonable, leap to game when partner raised his suit. Distributional hands come to life when your long suit gets raised. Ediz did well not to double the final contract. Four spades cannot be defeated, although declarer might go down if he fails to guess the location of the queen of hearts.

The ace of diamonds lead held the first trick and Ediz shifted smoothly to the four of clubs. This was a nice attempt at a deceptive play, but it should never work in this situation against an experienced declarer. South should reason that West would never make a dangerous shift away from the queen of clubs with a safe diamond continuation available. The only reason to shift to clubs must be to give South a losing option in the club suit. This reasoning should cause South to put up dummy’s king of clubs.

South, however, looked down at the 12-year-old boy on his left and thought “this kid would never underlead an ace against a suit contract” and played low from dummy. East happily won with the queen and fired back a club to partner’s ace. When the king of trumps later took the setting trick we were left with one bedazzled declarer and one grinning 12-year-old.