ACES ON BRIDGE
Today’s deal comes from the semifinals of the Australian National Open Teams; it is the flipside of yesterday’s deal. We had pointed out that declarer’s false-cards will occasionally rebound. But the advantage of these maneuvers is that fooling your partner does no harm when he is dummy.
Frequently, you want to prevent an opponent reading from his partner’s lead as a singleton and giving him a ruff. But occasionally, it is in your interest not to falsecard, as here.
Jacek Pszczola, known to the world at large as Pepsi, overcalled four spades over an off-center three-diamond pre-empt. When West led the diamond nine, Pepsi played low from dummy; East put up his ace and saw the two from South.
East could read that his partner had led a singleton, so he returned a diamond, and West ruffed. Back came a heart, which Pepsi took with his ace. He cashed his two top trumps, then crossed to the club ace to dispose of his heart loser on a diamond winner. West could ruff in with his master trump, but declarer had the rest.
At the second table, West also led his singleton diamond against four spades, but this time declarer dropped his jack under the ace. Jacek Kalita, as East, was in the hot seat, and he could not read whether the lead was a singleton or doubleton. But he could see that his side needed to set up heart winners. So, he shifted accurately to a low heart at trick two, and now the contract could no longer be made.
ANSWER: It must be right to raise hearts at once; otherwise, we may have to do so at an inconvenient level, or not do it at all. That said, a simple raise to two hearts covers a wide variety of hands. It would be convenient to have both a constructive and a minimum raise, as we would if the opponents had stayed silent. Some use a two-club call for a constructive three-card raise; that would be ideal here.