ACES ON BRIDGE

On this deal, the winner of the ITES Best Defended Hand of the Year, declarer committed a slight inaccuracy, but I think the defense deserved to beat the game for their efforts, anyway.

Against three no-trump, Bart Bramley led the diamond jack, promising the queen. While there are clearly nine tricks available for declarer by dislodging the spade ace before playing on hearts, let us see what happened at the table. Roy Welland ducked the opening lead and Bramley continued with a low diamond to East’s 10. Welland won, pitching a spade from dummy, and led to the heart ace, seeing the danger in taking the heart finesse. Now he planned to duck a club to West, win the return, and drive out the spade ace, but when he led a low club from dummy, Mark Feldman played the queen!

It was not safe to duck this, so Welland won and crossed to the heart king (hoping that the fall of the 10 or queen would make his life easy). No luck there; so he played a spade to his king and Bramley ducked!

Now declarer played two more rounds of clubs and committed the very slight error of leaving his own hand with the reentry when he saw that West was about to win the third club (it seemed irrelevant to him, since he knew East had the spade ace). This left him with no entry to the long hearts in dummy. The defense had two tricks in, and Bramley now led a heart to his partner’s queen for the diamond switch. When declarer won and played a second spade, Bramley had the rest.