Goren on Bridge

A pre-emptive bid can give the opponents headaches on some deals, but it didn’t bother them on this one. North-South bid easily to their best contract. In fact, the distributional information provided by the pre-empt helped declarer in the play.

The opening diamond lead went to the king and ace. South cashed the ace of spades, overtook the jack of spades with dummy’s king, and discarded his diamond loser on the queen of spades. West ruffed and led the queen of diamond, ruffed by South. The contract couldn’t be made if West started with four trumps to the king-queen. Declarer saw that he could handle the hand if East started with any two trumps or with a singleton honor. East was known to have started with four spades and six diamonds, so a singleton trump was quite likely.

Either way, the right play for declarer was to cash the ace of hearts. When that felled the queen from East, South led a low club to dummy’s queen, West ducking. South led a spade from dummy and ruffed it with the jack. West had no answer. An over-ruff, or under-ruff, would make it easy for South, so West discarded his remaining diamond. A club would have been no better. A low trump toward dummy’s 10 now sealed the deal. South could discard his low club on the established seven of spades and lose just the high trump and the ace of clubs. Well done!

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