ACES ON BRIDGE

“The world goes up and the world goes down.And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown Can never come over again.” — Charles Kingsley

With the strength evenly balanced between both sides and the play going back and forth, part-scores can generate the most interest.

With no attractive suit to lead today, West correctly kicked off with his top spade. Against one no-trump, leading a broken four-card suit is more likely to give a trick than serve a necessary productive purpose. The tempo is often less critical in a part-score.

East won the spade ace and, upon seeing declarer’s jack, assumed the lead was most likely from three small. The spade suit was a dry well, and most defenders would shift to hearts now, but East saw the threat of the club suit and switched to diamonds, hoping to knock out dummy’s entry. The diamond three was covered by the five, eight and king, after which declarer tried a club to the king.

West took his ace and reasoned that the suit was probably split 2-2 in the unseen hands. East’s club five was consistent with a doubleton, and declarer would have finessed the club 10 with king-10-low, in case the queen was doubleton onside. (Playing one to the king would not gain a trick against ace-doubleton.) So, West cashed the club queen before he could be thrown in with it. He followed up with the diamond ace-queen before exiting safely in spades.

Declarer now had to tackle hearts from his hand. Even though he led the heart queen, he still ended one down when West won with the king and fired a heart back. East’s diamond winner represented the setting trick.

ANSWER: Even if you have a penalty double of a strong no-trump available, you need quite a bit more than this to double such an opening — either a balanced 17 or so, or a source of tricks. You have no good lead, so pass. As an aside, I’m no longer a great fan of a penalty double here. For a range of alternative defensive lines, consider bridgewebs.com/dba/Notrump_Defense.pdf.