ACES ON BRIDGE

Opening Lead: Heart queen

This week’s deals are taken from the 2019 Gold Coast Congress in Australia,with today’s exhibit showing contrasting fortunes in a part-score.

Both Souths declared two spades on the heart queen lead. The first declarer ducked. He won the second heart to try a club to the 10 and queen. Back came a third heart; declarer ruffed and led a spade to the jack and queen.

East now played the fourth heart, and South pitched a small diamond. Declarer finessed unsuccessfully on the club return and won the third round. After drawing trumps ending in dummy, declarer should have deduced that West had shown 8 points in hearts and clubs, so as a passed hand he could not have the diamond ace. Having taken his eye off the ball, he went down two.

At the other table, Justin Mill also declared two spades. He took the heart ace and advanced the club jack. When West played low smoothly, South decided that both club honors were likely to be wrong.

West shifted to a low diamond at trick three, which went to the ace, and when the defense reverted to hearts, Mill ruffed the third. Since West appeared to hold 8 points in clubs and hearts plus the diamond queen, as a passed hand she could not also hold the spade queen.

So Mill played the spade ace and king, dropping the queen, then drew the last trump and ruffed a heart back to hand.West had to pitch from her three clubs and two diamonds. She discarded a club and was endplayed in that suit to lead diamonds for declarer’s ninth winner.

ANSWER: Lead a trump. You cannot expect partner to have much, so it would be overly optimistic to try for a third-round club ruff. It may be necessary to cut down on dummy’s ruffs, and unless partner has the doubleton heart jack, this lead should be relatively passive.

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