ACES ON BRIDGE

This week, our deals come from the spring North American Bridge Championships of 2023, held in New Orleans.

Play along as West in today’s deal from the final session of the Jacoby Swiss Teams. Your weak jump overcall does little to hinder the opponents, who alight in five clubs. Your bid has given East the opportunity to raise hearts, though. That convinces you to lead a heart when you might not otherwise have done so.

East takes the trick with the heart ace and returns the heart seven to your jack. On the surface, it might appear as though he began with three hearts for his competitive raise, but it is commonplace to raise on a doubleton honor in expert partnerships, to consume a key extra level of bidding space. The heart spots are a much more reliable indicator of the split.

Partner would normally return the highest card from a remaining doubleton, to give current count. Accordingly, he would play back the queen from an original ace-queen-seven (or put in the queen at trick one and return a low heart). Declarer must hold the outstanding heart, and it is therefore safe to play a third round; you will not be offering up a ruff-and-sluff. You hope to promote a trump trick for partner.

In fact, this defense stymies declarer. If he were to ruff with the club king, he could only finesse through partner once for lack of reentries to dummy. Declarer’s alternative of inserting the club seven from dummy, hoping for you to hold queen-eight doubleton, works no better here.

ANSWER: Lead the spade 10. Partner should have a strong hand with diamonds based on this bidding. It is unlikely that many diamond tricks will stand up, so lead a trump to cut down on declarer’s ruffs. This is often a good idea when you have the balance of power. If dummy hits with very short clubs, getting two or three rounds of trumps in might be critical.

A person with imprecise ideas can understand little and be of less help to others. — Ignatius of Loyola