Aces on Bridge

In today’s deal from a team game, you arrive in three notrump, against which West leads the spade seven, East playing the jack. How should you play the contract?

Unless the club ace is doubleton (or singleton), you will score only two club tricks. The defenders will hold up the club ace until the third round to cut you off from the dummy. You should begin by playing the club queen, overtaking with dummy’s king when West plays the five. As you expected, the defenders will hold up their club ace. What next?

If the club ace is now bare, you can succeed simply by playing another round of clubs. This is somewhat against the odds (because the four and five have appeared on the first round of the suit, indicating someone has played a singleton and someone has three clubs), but you do have a better play available.

That chance is to take the heart finesse, which is around a 50-50 shot. At trick three, you play a heart to the queen, and the finesse wins. You can then continue with a second club to dummy’s eight, ducked again by West to kill that suit. However, since you are in dummy again, you can repeat the heart finesse. Hearts do not break 3-3, but you have nine tricks anyway — two spades, three hearts and two tricks in each of the minor suits.

Nicely done— but let’s hope that the North-South pair of the other team didn’t bid six clubs!