The juniors battled in Lyon, France

Last year, the open and youth world championships were played simultaneously in Lyon, France. The American junior (under 26) team of Anam Tebha-Kevin Rosenberg, Adam Grossack-Zachary Grossack and Christian Jolly-Adam Kaplan won both the premier Junior Teams and the subsidiary Board-a-Match Teams. This deal from the junior final against Japan shows the advantage of a long suit and the difficulty of discarding accurately.Attheothertable,after Rosenberg (East) opened one spade, South passed. Five rounds later, North ended in four diamonds. Declarer lost one spade, two hearts and two clubs to go down two. In the given auction, Adam Grossack (South) was happy to double despite only three low hearts. Over West’s raise, Adam’s younger brother, Zach, promised some values with his three-diamond advance. With a weaker hand willing to compete at the three-level, he would have bid an artificial two no-trump. Adam started with eight tricks: two spades, five diamonds and one club ... and someone once claimed that where there are eight, there are nine. He took the first trick with his spade queen and ran the diamonds. East had to make four discards. His first three were fine: club six, heart nine and spade three. Then, though, he had to pitch another spade or a high heart. When he chose the heart jack, blocking that suit, declarer played the ace and another club. After East returned a spade to South’s ace, Grossack cashed the club queen for his contract and a gain of 13 international match points.