ACES ON BRIDGE

In today’s deal from a past world pairs event, Jimmy Cayne had to work hard to disrupt the opponents’ communications. North opened one heart, both for the lead and for a certain preemptive value. South responded with a wide-ranging one no-trump, and East backed in with a double to show a strong hand long in hearts. South showed his maximum by redoubling, and that was that. Placing strong hearts with his partner, West, Lars Blakset, led the heart nine in an attempt to retain the lead or unblock the suit. Cayne could see that he needed to develop his diamonds and that he would likely lose three spade tricks in the process. He would therefore have to limit the defensive heart tricks to one. It would be fatal to leave West on play for a further heart lead, or to insert the jack and make it safe for East to continue the suit, so Cayne called for the ace and worked on diamonds. Jens Auken, sitting East, won the second diamond and shifted to the spade seven.

If declarer had played low, West would have overtaken with the 10 and played another heart through. His spade king would then let him lead through dummy’s heart jack and set the contract.

But Cayne rose with the spade queen. This would gain if East had both honors, but here it restricted West to one spade entry. Declarer could win the next heart with the king, cross in clubs and knock out the remaining diamond honor, after which East could cash only one heart trick and two spades. That meant plus 560 for declarer.