ACES ON BRIDGE

Today’s deal was played in a high-level online event run by the ACBL. Four spades would have been a cheap save, but five hearts was no bargain.

Declarer ran the spade lead to his queen and played a trump to the 10, which held the trick. Now it would seem right to ruff out the opponents’ diamond honor before continuing trumps, but declarer played a second trump. East won as West pitched an encouraging club. East returned a spade to dislodge dummy’s entry, whereupon declarer had to revise his assessment of the distribution.

West’s club discard was likely to be from the king plus length, or he surely would have let go of a safe spade. Also, East’s defense was likely based on his controlling the diamonds, or he might have played a club through in the hope of scoring the setting tricks there.

Drawing a round of trumps and then crossing to hand with the club ace to take a diamond finesse would set up club winners for the defense. Nor could declarer play top diamonds from dummy. He could ruff out the diamond queen but would lack the entries to make use of the long cards.

Declarer had to establish diamonds while retaining dummy’s entries, so he could run diamonds through East as trump substitutes. He therefore called for a low diamond from the table at trick five. East won the diamond queen and played a club, but declarer simply took his ace then crossed over to dummy in diamonds and played on that suit to neutralize East’s trump holding.

ANSWER: In third seat, sometimes tactics override aesthetics. Opening one no-trump with a suit-oriented hand and a strong sixcard minor may not be to everyone’s taste, but it may be your best practical shot here. If you open one diamond, you have an awkward rebid. You had better get the hand off your chest in one fell swoop with a no-trump opener, making it much harder for the opponents to reach a major-suit fit.