THE ACES ON BRIDGE

“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” -- Douglas H. Everett .....................

Many times, your holding in a side suit drives your strategy in trumps. After a simple auction to four hearts, West goes passive with the lead of the club nine. East wins his ace and cannot sensibly switch to another suit, so continues with a second club.

South takes the second trick, but cannot draw trumps at once; if he plays a trump to the ace and a second trump, the defense might win and play a third round. Even if trumps split, this could leave him with a problem, as there would be only one trump in dummy to cope with two or more possible spade losers.

An alternative approach might be to draw no trumps at all and play on a crossruff. The danger with following that route (or even drawing exactly one round of trumps with the ace) is that the defense may make their three high trumps separately.

The winning line is to give up a trump at trick three. You can win the return, then play the heart ace, and only after that will you tackle the spades. Play the spade king, a spade to the ace, and ruff a spade, and you can later ruff another spade to establish your fifth spade. The defense wins the first trick, the heart you give up, and one more trump at the end, but that is all.

Be aware that today the small trump spots simplified declarer’s task here. Had declarer possessed the trump jack or queen, there might have been alternative strategies to confuse the issue.