ACES ON BRIDGE

— Henri-Frederic Amiel

Australia’s most consistent pair in the early part of this last decade was Sartaj Hans and Tony Nunn. On this deal, from a recent World Championship match between Australia and the U.S., Hans played skillfully to land a contract that failed at many tables.

Against three no-trump, Marty Fleisher for the U.S. led the spade four, taken by his partner, Mike Kamil, with the king. On the spade return, Fleisher ducked declarer’s jack. Hans now played a diamond to dummy’s ace, cashed the diamond king and ran the club 10 to West’s jack. A low spade cleared the suit and put the lead in dummy.

At this point, most of the unsuccessful declarers took a second club finesse and lost two clubs and three spades. Hans instead saw that he needed only two club tricks, but that he surely needed to keep West off lead. So he played a club to his ace, then cashed his two diamond winners, pitching a heart from dummy on the first.

Fleisher could spare a heart on the third round of diamonds, but he had to let go of a spade on declarer’s final diamond — pitching a heart honor would have let dummy throw a club. Declarer would then have been able to lead out the heart queen to establish a second heart trick.

Once West discarded a spade, Hans pitched a second heart from dummy and set up the clubs, leaving Fleisher on lead. The defense could cash a spade, but then had to concede the last two tricks to dummy.