IF THEY GO TOO HIGH, BRING THEM DOWN

Will Rogers said, “Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.”

Isn’t that the truth? At the bridge table, though, we try to defeat declarer by assuming partner has the cheapest hand to achieve that end.

This deal occurred during the World Youth Teams Championship in Italy last year. At the first table, North-South had made three no-trump. Let’s see how Harald Eide (East) and Christian Bakke from Norway worked out what to do.

The auction was optimistic. North really should have passed over one diamond with that 43-3-3 garbage. When she dragged up a one-heart response, South’s two-notrump rebid indicated a strong hand with long diamonds. North’s three diamonds was weak and denied five hearts.

West led the spade three, not the ideal start. South took East’s jack with his ace and returned a spade to dummy’s 10, East playing the seven: high-low with a remaining doubleton.

Now declarer led a diamond to his queen, East playing the two, upsidedown count. What did Bakke do after winning with his king?

He realised that declarer had started with 3-1-6-3 or 3-2-6-2 distribution, and that his side needed to take four heart tricks now. If South had a low doubleton, West had to shift to a low heart. But Bakke decided that declarer was more likely to be 1-3 than 2-2 in the rounded suits, so he led the heart king to swallow South’s queen and collect the necessary number of tricks.