ACES ON BRIDGE

Her beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.

— Percy Shelley

This deal from the qualification stages of the North American Swiss Teams at the Denver Nationals in 2005 shows Pamela Granovetter at work once again, but this time as declarer rather than as a defender.

After a normal auction, she took the diamond jack lead in dummy and decided that, just in case West had a 2=2=3=6 shape with semi-solid clubs, she needed to take four spade tricks without letting East into the lead. So, she produced the spade eight — and much to her surprise and pleasure, it held the trick.

She repeated the spade finesse, and when the suit split 4-2, she had 11 tricks. As the cards lay, she did have other routes to nine tricks, but the way she played was most elegant.

Let’s say instead that declarer plays a spade to the jack, then cashes the ace and king. She can recover by taking both top hearts and playing three more rounds of diamonds. Then she can endplay West with the fourth diamond to lead clubs for the ninth trick. However, this line would fail if East could win the fourth diamond.Then that player would be able to cash out the red winners and play a club to take the rest.

Granovetter’s result was not worth a game swing, though. In the other room, a club lead from West meant declarer could win and cash the heart ace, then cross to the spade ace, lead a heart to the king and take the spade finesse for nine tricks.

ANSWER: Bid two clubs. Your hand is unbalanced, so treat it as such. The clubs may be poor, but it is important to describe your shape economically in the early auction if you can. It could be right to play in a club part-score. I understand and can sympathize with the idea of rebidding one no-trump to show a minimum balanced hand, but your great controls argue for a suit contract.

If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com