ACES ON BRIDGE

This week’s deals are all taken from the round-robin stage of the 2018 World Youth Team Championships held in Suzhou, China, where Tim van der Paverd of the Netherlands youngsters reached six no-trump after a quantitative auction. (Six clubs is a much better contract, of course.)

He took the diamond lead in dummy to play a spade to the king and ace. He would ultimately need a fourth trick from the heart suit, but there was no need to commit himself at once. He could first try to find out more about the opponents’ distribution.

Declarer took the diamond return with his ace and cashed another diamond, as East followed suit. Then came four rounds of clubs ending in hand, as West pitched two spades and a diamond out of necessity. Now declarer was pretty sure that West had begun with 4=4=4=1 distribution. The alternative was that the spade jack and spade 10 were both false cards from a five-card suit, which was possible but unlikely.

Declarer backed his judgment and played with the odds in case of a 4-2 heart split. He could not afford to cash the heart ace first, for want of entries, but there was no need to. Having carefully left the lead in hand, South could finesse the heart 10 on the first round, then cash the queen and run the suit.

Perhaps West should have ducked the spade, which could have been a useful ploy when declarer had a third spade, convincing declarer to return to dummy and play another spade. It would have had very little effect on the outcome today, though.