ACES ON BRIDGE

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice. — Will Durant

All the deals this week come from the 2014 Summer Nationals, held in Las Vegas in July.

When Kit Woolsey gives you a deal he thinks might be interesting, you can assume it will offer more than other people’s challenges. So put yourself in four spades as South and see if you can match his logic.

At trick one, West leads the diamond jack to East’s king. Back comes a low trump — now you have to plan the rest of the play.

It might seem like a blind guess as to whether to rise with the ace or finesse the queen, but look a little more closely at the position. When you are in a bad contract, look for a set of conditions that would allow you to make. When, as here, you are in a good contract, go to the other extreme and look at what lie of the cards might defeat you — then protect against that lie.

At trick two, Woolsey put up the spade ace, calculating that the contract was in danger only if East had the club king. If that were so, he could infer that East would have short spades and a full opening bid if his hand included the spade king. So if he held that hand, he would likely have acted over North’s one-heart response to show spades, either by doubling or cue-bidding one spade, perhaps.

Woolsey concluded that it must be right to rise with the ace — and so it proved.

ANSWER: The diamond suit must be your best chance to defeat the game. The normal lead from this holding is the king, but at teams you might be prepared to sacrifice overtricks to maximize your chance to set the game. Leading a low diamond works when partner has the doubleton ace and dummy has jack-third (or declarer jack-fourth). So I’d risk the low diamond lead at teams. If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com