ACES ON BRIDGE
“The Common Law of England has been laboriously built upon a mythical figure — the figure of The Reasonable Man.” — A.P. Herbert
In today’s deal, North correctly introduced his four-card diamond suit at his second turn. Unless the suit disparity is great, one should usually show the second suit with 6-4 shape, thus showing nine of your 13 cards rather than six of them. South felt he had too much to invite game with a call of three spades, so he plowed into four spades and received a heart lead: a likely singleton. He won that with the heart queen and looked no further than the percentage play in trumps: low to the queen, then back to hand with a diamond ruff to continue with the ace-king of spades.
Alas for declarer, East grabbed the first diamond and dealt his partner a heart ruff. A club came back from West (technically, the king would have been best) to extract the late entry to dummy. From that point on, declarer could not avoid losing two club tricks as well, for one down.
The danger of a heart ruff and eventually losing touch with dummy should have been clear to see. Can you see what declarer might have done to avoid this fate?
Declarer should have abandoned the best play in the trump suit (when analyzed in a vacuum) in favor of cashing the ace and king, sacrificing dummy’s queen. As long as spades broke 3-2, he could then revert to hearts and lose only a spade and a diamond, and he might even survive a 4-1 trump break if the hearts split.In fact, if West did not have the missing trump with which to ruff in, declarer would make 12 tricks. In short, by sacrificing a trump trick, he would retain control of trumps and save a vital tempo.
ANSWER: Lead the diamond four. It could be right to lead a heart, but I would plump for my five-card suit. A heart shift can wait unless partner has five of them. It is not as though a heart lead is necessarily any safer than a diamond against three no-trump. When you don’t know what to lead, try your five-card suit — or try to find your partner’s!
If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, e-mail him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com. Copyright 2024, Distributed by Universal Uclick for UFS