ACES ON BRIDGE

At the top level of bridge, partnership agreement about signals and discards is as important as agreements on bidding.

Today’s deal comes from a recent European championship match between Romania and Italy, the eventual winners.

At both tables, West led a low club against three no-trump. When the Italians were defending, the Romanian declarer won the club queen at trick one, cashed the diamond ace, and played a diamond toward dummy’s jack. Claudio Nunes (West) discarded the heart six and Fulvio Fantoni wasted no time in switching to the spade nine, ensuring that the defenders took four tricks in that suit.

In my view, it should have been easier for the Romanians at the other table. Here Lorenzo Lauria, declarer for Italy, won the club queen, cashed the diamond ace and then crossed to dummy’s heart jack to run the diamond jack.

This told everybody that declarer had four heart tricks, and West could surely tell that declarer had at least three diamond tricks (given his play) and two clubs. So, West should have discarded a club, suggesting to East that he try something else. As it was, West discarded a heart, and East continued clubs when on lead with the diamonds. As far as he was concerned, West could have held both black aces instead of his actual holding. If so, it would have been necessary to clear the clubs before putting West in with the spade ace to cash his club winners.

BOBBY WOLFF