ACES ON BRIDGE
A prince … must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot defend himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten wolves. — Niccolo Machiavelli
When the sight of dummy reveals that entries may be at a premium, you must take care to avoid embarrassment. Now that you have been warned, you won’t fall into a heffalump trap, will you?
After a rapid auction to three no-trump, West led the spade queen. Declarer saw she had nine tricks — provided that the clubs brought in the expected five winners.
South ducked the opening lead, more for form’s sake than anything else, then won the spade continuation and reassessed what could go right and what could go wrong.
She noticed that if she played dummy’s clubs from the top and followed in her own hand with small cards, a 3-1 break in clubs would mean that she would be forced to win the fourth round of the suit in hand, blocking communications to the fifth winner. Similarly, if
East held all four missing clubs, the contract would be doomed.
But there were two undesirable outcomes that declarer could handle, the first being West’s holding all four missing clubs: The situation would still be under control as long as South retained both her two high clubs (for the possible finesse) and the low one as an entry.
So, at trick three, South led the club seven from hand to dummy’s queen. When everyone followed, she now only had to remember to unblock her two high clubs under the king and ace.
However, if East had shown out, declarer would have been in a position to return to hand and finesse against the jack.