Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
ACES ON BRIDGE
“If the sun and moon should doubt, They’d immediately go out.”
— William Blake
At the 2007 Cavendish pairs, four spades proved fascinating here. When John Diamond led the diamond 10, declarer finessed and then played two rounds of trumps and a club to the jack. Jim Krekorian won and exited with a diamond. South now eliminated clubs before diamonds, and in the four-card ending, with three hearts and a spade in both hands, he led a low heart. Diamond’s careful play of the heart nine doomed declarer to down one.
Note that on the diamond lead, declarer’s best line is to finesse and then strip away diamonds in the process of drawing trumps. Next, he should lead a club to the queen. To give the defense a chance, East must win and smoothly return a low club! (In a similar situation, he must duck if declarer leads the bare club honor from the board.) Now, if declarer falls for the bait, he will assume the missing club honor is on his left.
Even then, South might still come home.
While leading the heart
10 in the ending would work, it is not the percentage play. However, declarer can allow for both honor-third and nine-third if he reads the position perfectly. At the table, East had to pitch a club on the third round of spades. If declarer played his last trump, a single-suit squeeze would work. If East shed the heart six, he could be endplayed in the suit. If he discarded a heart honor, everyone would be down to three hearts, and declarer could build a heart trick by force by leading to the eight.
ANSWER: Pass, even at favorable vulnerability. You are likely to lose the auction, so why gift the opponents a blueprint of your shape? This might help them a lot in the play, or they may even work out to double you, or stay low or even to play the hand in no-trump when warned of the likely bad breaks. Only when you have a fair chance of winning the auction should you show the minors, or any two-suiter.