Goren on Bridge

North-South were playing a popular modern convention — support doubles. South would have doubled at his second turn if he held three hearts, so North knew that a heart fit didn’t exist when he jumped to five diamonds. West’s double also made it seem that the heart finesse, if needed, was likely to work, so North made the aggressive jump to game.

South won the opening spade lead in hand with the ace and took a moment to plan the play. He needed to develop the hearts for two discards, so he led his heart at trick two and inserted dummy’s queen when West played low. He continued with the ace of hearts, discarding a spade, and then ruffed a heart with his ace of diamonds. He drew one round of trumps with the queen of diamonds before leading the jack of diamonds and overtaking it with dummy’s king. South led another heart from dummy and ruffed it with the 10 of diamonds. This felled the king and established dummy’s jack of hearts as a winner.

Declarer now led his carefully preserved four of diamonds to dummy’s seven, drawing the last trump. He cashed the jack of hearts and discarded his remaining spade. He then ruffed a spade and conceded two club tricks to the defense, but he had the 11 tricks that he needed. Nicely played!

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