ACES ON BRIDGE
Crocodiles are easy; they try to kill and eat you. People are harder; sometimes they pretend to be your friend first. — Steve Irwin
In the first session of the Yokohama Open Pairs last February, this deal presented an interesting problem for both declarer and the defenders.
West’s heart lead let the defenders cash out that suit; playing standard signals, East could encourage with the 10 under the ace to simultaneously unblock the suit. It would be much easier on a low heart lead, but I prefer the top heart.
Dummy had to find two discards and let go a diamond and a club, while East pitched a suit-preference spade two. East’s accurate shift to a low club went to the king and ace.
Declarer Dawei Chen now ran four rounds of spades, East discarding the club eight and the club five, and West the diamond seven. Chen diagnosed that the diamond queen had to be guarded and offside, and that East had reduced to a four-card ending where he had all three diamonds and the club jack left. Chen then crossed to his diamond ace and led a sneaky low club from hand.
To defeat the contract,
West had to rise with the club queen (the right play whether South or East had the jack) to exit with a diamond and ensure a diamond trick for his partner. When West failed to play crocodile and swallow up partner’s jack, East had to overtake his partner’s club 10 and was endplayed to concede the rest.
Incidentally, for all of us inclined to cast the first stone and blame West, notice that East could have discarded the club jack at his previous turn to help partner get it right.
ANSWER: Responding one diamond here is not wrong, but my preference is to respond one spade with any hand where I do not intend to take a second call facing a minimum rebid from my partner. When I respond one diamond, I’m usually denying a major unless I have at least invitational values. So opener tends to rebid one no-trump over one diamond on any balanced hand (even with a four-card major in a 4-3-3-3 hand).
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