Goren on Bridge

Today’s deal is from a team match in China, where an opening one no-trump range is commonly 13-15. The auction was the same at both tables, but at the other table, the two-heart overcall only showed hearts. At both tables, West cashed two heart tricks and shifted to his singleton club. Declarer won with dummy’s king and ran the queen of spades to West’s king. Both West’s were end played and forced to choose between shifting to a diamond or yielding a ruff-sluff. Both chose to lead a diamond, of course, hoping that partner held the jack.

Both declarers let the diamond shift run around to their jack and then cashed the ace of spades and learned about the 4-1 split. Both declarers now faced the same problem: How to get to dummy to finesse East out of his 10 of spades?

At the other table, where South didn’t know about West’s minor suit, he chose to cross to dummy with the ace of diamonds. When this was ruffed, he was down one. At this table, the declarer, known only to us as Lin, reasoned that West would not have shifted to diamonds if he had a safe club to lead, so he led a club to dummy’s queen. A spade finesse later, he claimed his contract.

Admittedly, Lin had an advantage in knowing that West held a second suit. Wasn’t his reasoning logical enough to have been matched at the other table, even not knowing about the other suit? What do you think? 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.