ACES ON BRIDGE

“Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.”

— Apuleius

A dummy reversal plus a squeeze may seem like an unusual theme. But while you might expect we would have burned through all such plays two days ago, let’s examine Dick Fleischman and Marty Baff at work at the Cincinnati Nationals in 2000.

South’s rebid of four diamonds was an odd choice, especially opposite a passed partner. North had a reasonable raise to slam, expecting more diamonds opposite. After all, the pointedsuit fillers seemed to be working overtime.

On a top heart lead, ruffed, and a trump to the jack, East had a choice of defenses. Ducking makes declarer’s life tougher, and, of course, there is a spade ruff available — which is somewhat difficult to find after South’s jump rebid, suggesting no more than a five-card spade suit. East chose to win his diamond ace and return a heart. Declarer ruffed, cashed the diamond king, and crossed to the spade king to finish the trumps, pitching two spades. He then finessed the spade jack.

When declarer cashed the spade ace, West was squeezed between hearts and clubs — another dummy reversal and squeeze to go with our Thursday hand.

East’s heart return when in with the diamond ace had only helped declarer pull off the dummy reversal. A trump return would have been no better, leaving declarer with enough entries to establish the long spade, but if East was not going to give his partner a spade ruff, the winning switch was a club, which would have forced declarer to expend an entry prematurely.

ANSWER: Open four hearts. Cramp the auction to make it hard for the opponents to reach their likely spade fit. Even if they do manage to bid four spades, partner might have a nasty surprise for them. The essence of preempting is to make the opponents guess; sometimes they will guess wrong.