ACES ON BRIDGE

For when the One Great Scorer comes, To write against your name He marks - not that you won or lost - But how you played the game. — Grantland Rice

All the deals this week come from the Cavendish tournament, where a series of Invitational Pairs games were played annually in Las Vegas from the mid-’90s until just a couple of years ago. The event has now moved to Monaco.

Today’s example shows that sometimes the most innocent of deals produce swings. The late Guido Ferraro played the normal game of four spades on a top diamond lead. That looks comfortable enough, just looking at the North-South cards, doesn’t it? After winning trick one, Eddie Wold, as West, shifted to the club king. Ferraro won and took the spade finesse (wouldn’t you?).

Now Wold won and led a second top diamond, forcing Ferraro to ruff in dummy — or so he thought. But at this point, declarer was stuck in dummy. He could only lead hearts or clubs, so now one defender could get a ruff in one suit and eventually give his partner a ruff in the other. Down one — and it’s hard to see that declarer did anything wrong. The alternative line of cashing the spades from the top might fail if trumps are four-one, so what else could declarer have done?

The strange thing is that if declarer had not ruffed the second diamond, he would have been in a position to overtake dummy’s remaining trump and make 10 tricks.

As the original reporter noted in passing, declarer had nine winning discards from dummy and only one losing option. To reject your 90 percent winning odds is never a good idea in Las Vegas.

ANSWER: Few of us are sufficiently gifted with psychic talent to think we might guess the killing lead here. Since all four suits could be right, let’s play the percentages and find the lead that combines a reasonable degree of safety with some likelihood of hitting partner. For me, that is the diamond jack, which may avoid costing a trick when it is wrong.