ACES ON BRIDGE

“Follow the siren’s call, and you’ll probably end up in the hospital.”

— Leslie Miklosy

Today’s deal features an interesting thirdhand play. North stretched to find a lead-directing opener in third seat, and South then signed off in two spades rather than pass one no-trump.This was a marginal decision, since North might have passed one spade with a minimum hand and three spades — like his actual hand.

On West’s heart lead, East took North’s king with his ace and shifted to a trump. West grabbed his two spade tricks and then played the heart eight to East’s queen. Back came a third trump, apparently limiting declarer to seven tricks.

However, West had to find some discards on the run of the spades. After sparing a heart and a diamond, he erred by letting go of a club. So declarer had a fourth club trick for his contract.

Who takes the blame for letting the contract through? While West made the fatal mistake, from his perspective, declarer might have held the heart 10 in a 5=3=3=2 shape, without the club queen. If that were the case, pitching the heart jack would have given declarer his eighth trick.

No, the fault lay with East. He should have won the second heart with the 10 to let his partner know who held that card. Declarer could not possibly have the heart jack, or he would have played low from dummy at trick one.After the heart 10 held, West would have released two hearts and a diamond, and declarer would have gone down.

In effect, if East had played the lower of “equals,” it would have cleared up the position for West.

ANSWER: Lead the diamond eight.Your best chance of taking tricks with this hand is via ruffs. A heart or a club would be an equivalent shot in the dark, but without as much upside, in my opinion.A further small bonus is that if you can get a ruff, declarer is apt to misguess any subsequent trump position.