ACES ON BRIDGE

I know a trick worth two of that.

— William Shakespeare This week, our deals revolve around red herrings in the play, when the presence of a high card is actually unhelpful and might as well be treated as a small card.

Take South’s hand today. Your threeheart rebid is raised to game, and West leads the diamond jack to East’s queen. East would probably not bother to overtake partner’s jack from an original holding of king-queen-low, so diamonds will not be 3-3 and you almost certainly lack the entries to establish the diamonds. Anyway, you need only one extra trick. You should instead try to make something of the clubs, either by taking a successful finesse of the queen or by ruffing the third round in dummy.

The trouble is that you cannot have both. If you were to finesse the club queen at trick two, East might win and switch to a trump. You would then lack a quick entry back to hand after unblocking the club ace. You would have to surrender the lead, allowing the defenders to play a second trump and prevent the ruff, leaving you needing to find diamonds 3-3.

Dummy’s club queen is an illusion.You should win the first diamond (lest East shift to a trump) and play a club to the ace, followed by the club queen. This way, after winning the trump switch, you can immediately ruff a club in dummy for your game-going trick.

This would be straightforward if dummy’s clubs were ace-small, but the queen acts as a distraction. At pairs, you might be tempted by the club finesse (and I’m not sure I can blame you).

ANSWER: The question is whether to attack diamonds (trying to develop winners for your side before declarer establishes clubs) or to lead trumps. I suppose one could even make some sort of case for the club ace lead, to take a look at dummy — but the loss of tempo could mean a shift would come too late. I’d lead a diamond.