QUICK CROSSWORD

Van Ronk was a folk singer so prominent in New York City's Greenwich Village in the 1960s that he was known as the Mayor of MacDougal Street. He said, “If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.”

In bridge, we are drawn to deals that are variations on the normal theme. In today’s, for example, how should South play in four hearts after West leads the club six ( second- highest from a suit without an honor) to the queen and ace?

South might have rebid two clubs. Then, presumably North would have rebid three hearts, and South would have gone on to game.

It is almost always true that if declarer can ruff a loser in the shorter trump hand, he should do so. When this deal was originally played in a teams match, one South ruffed a club at trick two, crossed to the spade king and ruffed another club. Now he couldn’t make the contract! He took two more spade winners and discarded his diamond king, but West ruffed and led his heart 10 to East’s ace. Declarer had to lose two hearts, the spade ruff and a late club.

At the other table, South spotted a variation, being happy to lose three trump tricks. He immediately played three rounds of spades and pitched his diamond. When West ruffed and led another club, declarer crossruffed the minors to get home. But even if West had led a trump at trick five, South would have still had only three trump losers.

Copyright United Feature Syndicate

( Asia Features)