ACES ON BRIDGE

“Honest bread is very well — it’s the butter that makes the temptation.” — Douglas Jerrold

Andrew Robson’s latest book, “Counting and Card Placement,” deals with many critical aspects of card play. As Robson says, tallying your quick and slow losers can be essential in determining the best line of play. For example, plan the play in four spades here, on the lead of the diamond queen.

While you have four spade, two heart, two diamond and two club winners, the problem is that you may also have four losers. (Effectively, you will take the tenth and last of your winners at trick 14!)

Say you win the first diamond and lead a spade. The opponents will win the ace and lead a second diamond. You will win the ace and draw trump to lead a heart. But the opponents can win and cash their third-round diamond winner, plus the club ace, for down one.

Agreed, you have to lose the three aces, but you can do something about that pesky slow diamond loser. It can be discarded on a heart, but you must set up the discard quickly — leading a trump loses a vital tempo. Instead, you must lead the heart at trick two.

There is a final wrinkle. If you win the diamond king at trick one to lead to the heart queen, the defenders can duck, win the second heart and lead a second diamond. You will then have no way back to hand to cash the third heart and eliminate the diamond loser. Instead, win trick one with the diamond ace, then set up hearts, with the diamond re-entry to hand still in place.

ANSWER: It feels right to lead spades rather than clubs. (The club lead is by no means safe, while the worst a spade can do is lead a suit that declarer could not play for himself.) If you are going to attack spades, the right card is the nine, since you have raised spades and already shown three cards in the suit. Had you not raised, you would lead low.