ACES ON BRIDGE

When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news. — Alfred Harmsworth

At the 1998 Cap Gemini World Pairs Invitational, we saw a relative rarity when Paul Chemla of France made an error in declarer play. His dissatisfaction with a bad guess on a high card must have been doubled upon discovering that he did not require the guess at all!

While three no-trump may be the best spot for North-South, the contract of four hearts on the lead of a top spade looked perfectly reasonable. After some thought, West shifted to the diamond six, middle of three cards, and East defended well by putting in the nine.

Declarer won in hand and crossed to the heart king, then continued with the heart nine. East continued his accurate defense when he covered, to deprive declarer of an entry to dummy. Now Chemla could draw all the trumps, but in the process, he made the mistake of pitching all of dummy’s spades.

Now a diamond to the jack, ducked, left him needing to find the club jack in the endgame. Since West clearly had the length, and from the auction East had the club ace, Chemla got it wrong by playing West for the club jack.

A better line would have been to leave one spade in dummy while drawing trumps, reducing to one spade, three diamonds and two clubs. Now when you lead a diamond to dummy after drawing trumps, East must duck it as before. But now you ruff dummy’s spade back to hand and lead a third round of diamonds. East takes it, but is endplayed to lead clubs away from his ace in the three-card ending.

ANSWER: It seems logical to bid one notrump now rather than raising diamonds, since you can also support diamonds later in a competitive auction; whereas if you raise diamonds now, you may have an awkward decision at your next turn. Also, your partner may misjudge how much defense you have, should you raise directly.