ACES ON BRIDGE

“Improvements make straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.”

— William Blake

The Spring Nationals start with the Grand National Pairs as a sort of appetizer before most of the hundreds of players arrive for the main tournament. The GNP is an event in which a couple of pairs from each district qualify to represent their area in a qualifying event followed by a final.

In the 2000 event held in Cincinnati, Jerry Goldfein (who had been part of the USA National team in the Rhodes Olympiad) was faced with a challenging declarer-play problem. Here he smartly rejected what appeared to be his best line on paper, when he divined a winning alternative.

Goldfein had done well to reach six diamonds, which looked like a fine spot. However, the 4-0 trumps and the 8-1 club split were potentially awkward to overcome.

On the lead of the club king, Goldfein won and advanced the diamond king. If trumps had not been 4-0, he intended to ruff a club with the diamond queen in comfort. When East won the trump ace and returned a high diamond, Goldfein resisted the temptation to try to ruff a club in dummy, deciding that it was a better chance to try to find East with both top heart honors. So he drew trumps and crossed to the spade queen to advance the heart jack. East covered, and Goldfein ruffed. Then declarer went back to dummy with the spade king and played the heart ace followed by the heart 10, which was covered and ruffed. When the heart nine fell, Goldfein could use the spade eight as a late entry to cash dummy’s heart eight for his 12th trick.

ANSWER: Lead the spade eight. Partner has made a Lightner double, asking for the lead of dummy’s first-bid suit. East’s most likely shape is 1=3=5=4, which is consistent with the spade layout around the table. Lead the spade eight to try to retain the lead if declarer’s singleton is smaller than the eight.