ACES ON BRIDGE

“A wise man once said that to do a great and important work, two things are necessary: a definite plan, and not quite enough time.”

— R.C. Schafer

In this deal from an online matchpoint event, South opened one diamond fourth in hand. West overcalled one heart, and North made a negative double before raising his partner’s one-no-trump rebid to the two-level. A jump to three diamonds on four small was unattractive, especially at this form of scoring.

West kicked off with the heart seven, declarer winning in dummy before working on diamonds. East took the second diamond as West pitched a spade, and back came a heart.

West knew from East’s echo in hearts that declarer had four of them. That suit was therefore a dry well. If declarer had held the club ace in addition to his 9 points in the red suits, he probably would have accepted the invitation. It was most likely that South had the spade king instead, in which case he had at least nine tricks ready to run, 10 in this case, unless the defense cashed out.

So West accurately switched to clubs, leading the jack to surround declarer’s 10. The defenders scooped in four club tricks to set the hand by one. A shift to a low club would have been disastrous — knowing West, as a passed hand, could not have both top clubs, declarer would play low from dummy, forcing the king and leaving dummy’s queen as a stopper.

The chosen line of defense would not have harmed West’s chances if East held king-10-low in clubs. Further, if declarer turned up with the club king, he always would have been able to come to eight tricks from the spades.

ANSWER: Lead the club 10. A red-suit lead is out of the question. There is not much going on in the black suits, except that you might be able to maneuver a ruff in clubs, especially given that you have the heart king as a control card. While the club 10 might represent a trick if you do not lead the suit, you cannot allow for every possible scenario.