Aces on Bridge

At a past Yeh Bros. Cup, thematch between the Sweden and Italy teams produced splendid examples of card-reading and playing for the best chance tomake an unlikely game. Antonio Sementa was the declarer here in an extremely delicate minor-suit contract.

Presumably, Sementa’s double of the spade-showing one-heart call showed hearts andaminor. It seems best to play the double and cue-bid here as each showing a specific minor along with the unbid major, in this case hearts. Partner Giorgio Duboin drove to game when confident he was facing short spades, and Sementa had to play five diamonds on a spade lead.

He took an uncharacteristically long time to play to trick two, but came to the right conclusion that East’s decision to compete to three spades marked himwith extra shape. Since Sementa needed trumps to split, it was right for declarer to infer that East had heart length, because if he had club length, Sementa would be left with three fairly sure losers. By contrast, if East had short clubs, the club and heart finesses might both work.

Eventually, declarer led a trump to dummy to run the heart queen. Fredrik Nystrom, as West, won and took his time before playing the ace and another diamond. Declarer won in hand, passed the club jack, covered all round, finessed in hearts, set up the hearts, ruffed a spade back to hand, and finally took the second club finesse for 11 tricks. This was a fine example of placing the cards where they needed to be to find a route to success.