ACES ON BRIDGE

One of the more basic elements of technique required in squeeze play is called a Vienna Coup. The idea is that, occasionally, communication problems between your hand and the dummy require you to cash a high honor from one hand or the other to allow you to exercise a squeeze. Mons Iver Hestnas of Norway was playing in Tenerife (in the somewhat surprisingly named Norwegian January Bridge Festival) when he had the opportunity to make such a play. Note South’s restraint in the auction: His sequence was invitational to game facing a minimum overcall, and clearly North had nothing to spare. South combined his discretion in the bidding with a nice play. West led a low club to East’s ace, and the run of the clubs meant that declarer and dummy each had to discard a heart and a spade. Declarer needed to bring in the rest of the tricks, and when West exited passively in diamonds, South won in hand. He knew the spade finesse would fail in view of West’s opening bid; but similarly, West was marked with the heart king. Had declarer run five diamond tricks immediately, he would have cut communications between his hand and dummy, and West would simply have kept the same length as South in the majors. Instead, declarer unblocked the heart ace before running the diamonds, pitching hearts from hand. When the heart king did not appear, Hestnas led a spade to his ace and dropped West’s king, scoring his queen at trick 13.