Houston Chronicle

ACES ON BRIDGE

- By Bobby Wolff

In today’s deal, East had a chance to prevent declarer from executing a neat maneuver in the trump suit. Put yourself in his shoes and see if you can do any better than he did. On the heart king lead against two spades, declarer ducks, then wins the heart jack with the ace to lead a low club to the jack and king. West takes his heart queen — and you pitch the diamond seven to encourage. Back comes the diamond eight, so you win the king. What next? At the table, East returned a spade. South won and cashed the second top trump before leading a club to the ace and ruffing a club. What was West to do? She could not over-ruff, or South would have had enough entries to dummy to be able to set up the long club. So she discarded a diamond, and now declarer trumped a diamond and ruffed out the clubs. Again, if West over-ruffed, dummy would be high, so she discarded a heart. But now South could lead a diamond at trick 12 and score the spade 10 in dummy for the eighth winner. There was just one chance for the defense, but it was a fairly hard one to spot: Rather than leading a trump, East had to return the club queen at trick six, smothering the 10 and locking declarer in dummy. Declarer can try to ruff a club to hand, but now West can over-ruff and return a diamond. That leaves declarer unable to ruff out the clubs without losing another trump trick to West.

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