Bridge THE CLUES ARE THERE FOR THE FINDING

Actress Jessica Alba said, “My theory is that if you look confident, you can pull off anything — even if you have no clue what you’re doing.”

A bridge player who has no clue what he is doing doesn’t look for the clues that would help him to find the winning declarer-play or defense. In today’s deal, South is in two notrump. West leads the heart five. What should declarer do?

In the auction, South undervalued his hand. The KaplanRubens evaluation method rates his hand at 23.85 points. South should have opened two clubs and rebid two no-trump. However, then a Stayman sequence would have warned West not to lead a heart. If he had chosen a diamond, careful defense would have beaten the contract.

Against two no-trump, though, West went with fourth-highest from his longest and strongest.

Declarer applied the Rule of Eleven. Five from 11 is six. So there were six hearts higher than the five in the North, East and South hands combined. Since declarer could see five of them, he knew East had only one. Could that be the king?

If so, West had started with a heart suit headed by the J-10-9-5 and would have led the jack. So, West had to have the heart king. South called for dummy’s queen.

When that held, declarer played a club to his queen and West’s king. West should have led another heart, but he shifted to a spade. Declarer cashed his black-suit winners and heart ace before giving East the lead in spades and scoring the diamond king at trick 13. Plus 180 was a 90% board.