ACES ON BRIDGE

**Forcing

Opening Lead: Diamond jack

Declarer played well to make lots of tricks on this deal from the open pairs qualifier in Istanbul last year, but only after the defenders had taken wrong steps, both on the opening lead and later in the play.

North-South were playing a version of the Polish Club where the one-club opener the included no-trump all range. balanced Ankush hands Khandelwal’s outside one-diamond response denied a five-card major and Ben Green’s natural one-notrump call showed a balanced 17-19. Now two clubs was a puppet to two diamonds, and two no-trump asked for majors, three no-trump denying them. This got West to make his natural (if unfortunate) lead of the diamond jack. Of course, at many other tables either North or South might have bid diamonds naturally.

Green won in hand and passed the club queen to the king as

West gave count. Back came the heart jack. West had a tough decision but perhaps could have foreseen the ending and taken her heart ace. These things are always easier in the postmortem, though.

When West ducked her heart ace, declarer cashed the spades and guessed clubs by playing the suit from the top, rather than finessing. This produced an ending where the 13th club forced West to discard a small heart, whereupon she was endplayed with her heart ace. Now she had to lead a diamond for the second time, and that allowed declarer an 11th trick for an impressive plus 660 and a 97% result.

?

ANSWER: Jump to four spades. You have excellent playing strength in support of spades and can justify a pre-emptive raise to game, which might make life hard for your opponents. High cards are far less important than fit when you have a void in the opponents’ suit and a guaranteed nine-card fit or better.

If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com