ACES ON BRIDGE

Opening Lead: Spade king

There was another nail-biting finish in the final of the 2022 Soloway Knockout. Following their semifinal comeback, Team Cope, down 17 international match points going into the last two boards against Team Street, had clawed back 12 on the penultimate board. Everything depended on the final deal.

At the other table, North-South had collected 450 after South had upgraded his hand to a strong no-trump opening. Here, Ron Pachtmann’s one-heart opening let Kevin Rosenberg in with a weak two-spade jump. Piotr Zatorski made a slightly distorted fit jump of four diamonds, believing his concentrated values would make up for the lack of a fourth heart. The intent was to help his partner decide over the impending fourspade bid.

Indeed, Simon Cope upped the ante to four spades. Doubling four spades would have netted an easy 300 and a win in the match, but Pachtmann quite reasonably bid on to five hearts.

After the lead of the spade king and the clubjack shift to the ace, the hand hinged on the trump guess, and there were no real clues from the bidding or play. While declarer could pick up queen-fourth in hearts on his right, he probably could not allow for that holding with West. For this small reason, Pachtmann probably ought to have played a heart to the king and one back, which would have picked off East’s queen. When he cashed the heart ace and then ran the jack, losing to the heart queen, it resulted in a sensational victory for the Cope team.

ANSWER: You can open the bidding light in third chair since partner will not have the values to carry the bidding to game. Your diamonds are great, so open one diamond to attract the lead and perhaps compete the part-score. You owe it to your partner to make his life easy on defense; failure to bid here is just as much an error as failing to count trumps.