ACES ON BRIDGE

As Micke Melander reported from the World Championships in Lyon last year, all too often a bridge player will wake up in a cold sweat, having realized how he had gone down in a contract he should have made. When Sweden played Brazil in the Seniors, Anders Morath confessed his sins to the bulletin.

As South, you are in four spades on the lead of the diamond jack. When you ruff the opening lead and play the spade king, everybody follows small. What next? Morath inferred that East had all the top diamonds, so West had the major-suit aces. Since trumps appeared to be 3-1, Morath cashed the three top clubs, pitching a diamond, then played a second trump, hoping he could play that suit from his hand for two losers. That wasn’t the case today.

He later realized he should have pitched a heart rather than a diamond on the third club. He would then have been able to lead a fourth club and ruff it high in hand. If West overruffs, he can do no better than play a diamond, letting declarer ruff and lose just two hearts. If West discards instead of overruffing, South simply ruffs a diamond in dummy to lose one trump and two hearts again.

Morath said that to make matters worse, West’s initial pass with both major-suit aces and the diamond jack meant that East was very likely to hold the heart queen, since East-West open most 11-counts. So an alternative route to success would have been to run the heart jack at trick five.