BRIDGE

TIMED RIGHT East-West vulnerable. South deals. Opening lead: Ace of Hearts A hand can seem amazingly simple at first glance, but then something unexpected happens and you have to re-group. The defence started with three rounds of hearts, South ruffing the third round. This looked to be a very simple hand. Should the outstanding trump split 3-2, the percentage split, all declarer needed to do was to draw trumps and knock out the ace of clubs. In line with that plan, South led a low trump to dummy’s queen and continued with the jack of spades. When East, surprisingly, showed out, South had to reconsider. Should South continue drawing trumps, it would exhaust all of his trumps to do so. This would be fine if East held the ace of clubs, but South was pretty sure that West held it. Had East started with the ace of clubs, three hearts, and a singelton spade, East would probably have raised hearts in the auction. Declarer could take four diamond tricks, but when he went to knock out the ace of clubs, West would be able to cash a heart trick for down one. The solution was quite simple: South led the queen of clubs from dummy. West won with his ace and played a fourth round of hearts, giving declarer an unwanted ruff-sluff. South was able to use dummy’s remaining spade to trump this while discarding a diamond from his hand. He crossed back to his hand with the king of clubs, drew West’s remaining trumps, and claimed the balance with three good diamonds.