ACES ON BRIDGE

In America, bridge tournaments focus on the bridge. The target is to play two sessions, and at least 50 deals a day. In France, even at the major regional events, players tend to compete in only one long session per day, and that leaves room for the beach in the morning and an extended dinner at night. Cannes and Biarritz are the models for these tournaments, and today’s deal comes from the latter event.

Pierre Saporta was declarer here, on a deal where most of the field had brought home five diamonds painlessly, after a spade lead allowed declarer to get three ruffs in dummy. But against Saporta’s contract of five diamonds doubled, West irritatingly found the best defense of a trump lead. East won the ace and continued the suit; put yourself in declarer’s position and take it from there.

Saporta drew the correct inference that East’s rebid suggested extra values, probably with a

5-3-3-2 pattern. So he won the second round of trumps with dummy’s 10 and immediately led and passed the club 10. West took that with the queen, but there was no further chance for the defense. Declarer could ruff the spade continuation, cash the club and heart aces, then ruff one loser heart in dummy and discard his remaining hearts on dummy’s club winners.

Had East covered the club 10, might South have assumed that East had queen-jack-third of clubs? Then he might have led a club back to the ace to try to ruff out the remaining club honor.

ANSWER: Are you happy jumping to four spades here? You should be, since the call is basically pre-emptive rather than a strong call. With a better hand, such as the spade ace instead of the four, one can use a jump to three no-trump to show a raise to four with some defense. I prefer that meaning for the call rather than having it show a balanced 13-15.