ACES ON BRIDGE

“Who knows where inspiration comes from? Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.”

— Amy Tan

In today’s deal, declarer could have relied on the club jack falling in two or three rounds. In that scenario, he could always fall back on the double diamond finesse.

Instead, South marked time by working on his weak suit, spades. Even if the defenders had five tricks to cash, they might not find it easy to do so. Indeed, they might block the suit and help declarer in the later play. Declarer won the heart king and led the first spade toward the closed hand, inciting East to split with the 10. West played small, realizing what had happened only after East continued with the spade king. When that was overtaken and West reverted to hearts, declarer could be sure his ploy had worked. Still, there was work to be done in order to take advantage.

At this point, declarer could have cashed the remaining hearts to get a count of the hand. He would see from the fall of the spots that West began with three hearts (he would probably not have led the five from jack-10-five-four or 10-fourth) and two spades, leaving eight minor-suit cards to his partner’s four. That would make a finesse of the club 10 a favorite.

South actually cashed the top diamonds, felling East’s queen, followed by the club king and ace. When the jack did not fall, he took the club queen, seeing East show out. He then extracted West’s last exit card by cashing the third heart. When declarer exited with the fourth club, West had to lead from his diamond jack-nine, conceding the ninth trick to dummy.

ANSWER: Your controls and your fine five-card suit could persuade you to upgrade to a strong no-trump opening, but the small doubleton in spades ought to put you off; why would you volunteer to declare the hand on a spade lead through partner? Yes, you have a maximum for opening one diamond and rebidding one no-trump, but that isn’t illegal (yet).