ACES ON BRIDGE
In today’s deal from a teams event, North jumped to four spades at his second turn to describe a minimum game-force. This route had the advantage of giving as little away as possible.
West opted for a trump lead, and declarer inserted the seven, confident that West would not underlead the queen. Playing the nine would have given declarer a guess on the next trump if East had been able to cover with the 10. He would have had to decide whether to lead the seven or jack from the dummy next.
South took East’s queen with his ace and started on clubs, covering West’s eight with the jack. East won cheaply and shifted accurately to the heart king. When declarer let it hold, East reverted to spades. Declarer won this in dummy, crossed to hand in trumps and led a second club. When West completed an echo with the seven, declarer covered with the nine. Though East could again win cheaply, South subsequently used dummy’s two red-suit entries to take a ruffing club finesse against East’s ace and then cross to dummy to run the suit.
Declarer judged the play well, but East should have continued hearts at trick four, removing one of dummy’s late entries. Declarer would have been unable to draw the last trump. He would cross back to his hand with a top diamond and play another club, whereupon East could win and return his low club to force declarer to ruff high. The second discard on dummy’s clubs would have vanished.
ANSWER: You should not overcall one no-trump — you would normally want a much more solid stopper than queen-doubleton, and maybe a point more. I would make a takeout double to target the right part-score strain. If we have the values for game, partner will take some positive action. No-trump can always come later.
If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, e-mail him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com. Copyright 2023, Distributed by Universal Uclick for UFS