ACES ON BRIDGE LEAD WITH THE ACES

In this, our final deal from the 2023 European Transnationals in Strasbourg, it looks as though declarer Ola Rimstedt might be able to come home in four hearts, but he cannot quite manage it without a little help from his friends!

On the layout shown, declarer must endplay West to lead away from the spade honors, but he must first reduce West to only spades, which means extracting a diamond from him. Thus, declarer must squeeze West by leading a fourth round of trumps; however, he cannot both draw trumps and eliminate the clubs while ending in dummy to cash the long heart. Still, Rimstedt gave it a good go. He won the club lead in dummy and played a low heart to the queen. Simon Cope (West) won with his ace and continued clubs. Declarer took this with the king and led out a third round of clubs.

This is where the defenders had to be careful. If West had been allowed to win this trick, it would have been best for him to exit in trumps. Declarer could then win the heart king, ruff a club and go back to the heart jack to play the final trump. West would have to discard a diamond (since a spade discard would allow the suit to be set up), but now a diamond finesse followed by the diamond ace would extract West’s exit-cards. At this point, a low spade would throw him in to concede the last two tricks.

Very neat, but Sally Brock (East) countered all this with the far-sighted move of ruffing her partner’s club winner and shifting to a spade. Cope won with his spade queen and was later able to take his spade king too, for one down.

ANSWER:

It may be worth keeping the bidding open for both obstructive and constructive reasons. However, I would not raise to two spades even in standard methods. Respond one no-trump and then give preference, to slow partner down. The forcing no-trump (in which this sequence denies constructive values if you possess three-card support) is becoming a common accessory with Standard American these days.