ACES ON BRIDGE
Opening lead: Heart king
You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are.
— Edward Albee
Regular partnerships have firm agreements about leading honors against notrump. One of the more sensible agreements is that from ace-king combinations, you lead the king if you want your partner to unblock the queen or jack, while the ace asks for attitude. Under the king, third hand drops an honor if he has one, or signals count.
Today, against three no-trump, West leads the heart king and East follows with the 10, suggesting a four-card suit. Now West knows a heart continuation would set up South’s queen, so he shifts to a club. Declarer wins dummy’s king and has to find a way to a ninth trick.
While declarer could hope to develop a spade trick, diamonds offer far more hope. At trick three, declarer must lead the diamond eight from the board as a sort of avoidance play. He is trying to set up a diamond trick while keeping East off lead. This approach will produce two tricks when East has only one of the diamond 10, queen or king.
Here West wins the diamond and plays a spade. South wins in hand, leads a club to the board, then plays the diamond jack, intending to let that card run if East plays low. When East covers, declarer wins the ace and plays a third diamond, thus setting up the long diamond for his ninth winner.
ANSWER: On this auction your partner’s two-spade call suggests a weak hand with no game interest and approximately a fivecard suit. In just the same way that you complete the transfer when partner asks you to, so here you must pass two spades. If your partner was interested in another strain or a higher level, he would not have signed off, as he did here.
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