Goren on Bridge

Today’s deal is from a tournament in Australia. North’s five club bid seems remarkable. Note that it would take an opening diamond lead to trouble a three no-trump contract.

Five clubs would have been defeated had West led the king of spades, but that would be an unlikely lead in any case and even more so after North bid the suit. Declarer scooped up the opening heart lead with dummy’s ace and quickly cashed the king to shed his spade loser. Playing on clubs would require a 2-2 split with the king onside — against the odds. South saw that if he could score a diamond ruff in dummy, he could handle any 2-2 club split, and also handle a 3-1 split as long as either the king or the jack were singleton. The problem was to keep East off lead so he couldn’t lead a trump.

At trick three, South led a low diamond from dummy and covered East’s card with the jack. West won with the king, but could do nothing to hurt declarer. South ruffed the heart continuation and then cashed the ace of diamonds and ruffed a diamond. He crossed back to his hand with a spade ruff and cashed the ace of clubs, claiming his contract when the jack fell.

You might think that East could defeat the contract by playing the queen of diamonds on the first round of the suit, but South can still triumph by winning with the ace and exiting with the jack. Bob Jones welcomes readers’ responses sent in care of this newspaper or to Tribune Content Agency, LLC., 16650 Westgrove Dr., Suite 175, Addison, TX 75001. Email responses may be sent to tcaeditors@tribune.com. © 2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.