ACES ON BRIDGE

Back on planet Earth they shatter the illusion The world’s going ‘round in a state of confusion. — Ray Davies

This week’s theme involves giving your opponents a chance to go wrong. If a play has only upsides, it is clearly a useful weapon to add to your armory.

A normal auction from a teams game landed South in a poor but makeable contract on today’s deal. Not for the first time, though, the defense had other ideas, and they successfully led declarer down the garden path.

West led his fourth-highest spade against three no-trump, and declarer optimistically tried the 10, covered by the jack and ace. Needing four club tricks for his contract, declarer laid down the club ace, hoping to guess well on the next round.

When East followed with the deuce, declarer had to decide whether West had kingthird or jack-third. He mentally flipped a coin and called for dummy’s 10, landing his game.

In the other room,

East made declarer’s losing option more attractive by dropping the club nine under the ace, making dummy’s spot cards solid.

Thus, declarer could now succeed against one 4-2 break as well — jack-nine doubleton with East. This extra chance was enough to tip the scales in favor of playing the club queen. East had swindled declarer out of his game bonus.

An interesting corollary to this is that if an expert East does not drop the nine, he cannot hold king-nine-low. However, jacknine-low is still a possibility because playing the nine from that holding would serve only to help declarer.

BID WITH THE ACES

South holds:

1 NT

?

ANSWER: This hand is far from useless in context because the spade jack and diamond king should be useful fillers in partner’s long suits. Two diamonds may be the best part-score to play in, but we cannot be sure how strong partner’s hand is. We could still have a game, so passing now would be too pessimistic. False preference to two spades is best, since if partner makes another bid, we are likely to belong in game.

bobbywolff@mindspring.com