ACES ON BRIDGE

Respect was mingled with surprise. — Sir Walter Scott

Today’s deal is another example of how to tackle a long suit facing a singleton. To my mind, the correct route in this one is somewhat counter-intuitive. You declare three no-trump on a spade lead and put in the jack, expecting it to hold, since the lead appears to be fourth-highest from an honor. When East covers with the queen, you must win the king, and suddenly you are short of entries to establish the clubs. If you cross to dummy and lead a club to the jack and king, your only re-entry to hand is in hearts, so you will not be able to both set up and cash the clubs.

Therefore, you must go after diamonds rather than clubs, and you can afford to lose three tricks, but not four. If diamonds break, you have enough entries to set the suit up, so you must concentrate on the 4-2 breaks. What are the sensible options?

It seems logical to lead to an honor in dummy and duck the next diamond, which copes fine with the 4-2 breaks where West has both honors, and with two honors doubleton in West. This turns out to be exactly half the 4-2 breaks (15 of the 30 possible breaks).

But you can do better. If you duck both the first and second diamond, you will succeed whenever either East or West has one or both honors doubleton, and there are nine such distributions with either East or West. That gives you 18 of the possible 30 distributions where this approach wins, making it the best line.

ANSWER: A natural two no-trump seems right. That leaves room for your partner to show delayed support for clubs; if he doesn’t, you will surely not wish to play in that suit. If your partner bids three diamonds, you might bid three hearts to offer some delayed support for that suit. Alternatively, a call of two spades may get you to no-trump from your partner’s hand. Your clubs don’t seem quite good enough to repeat.

BOBBY WOLFF