Goren on Bridge

East-West vulnerable, South deals

The Gambling Three no-trump opening has been popular among tournament players for decades, although it doesn’t come up often. It shows a long, solid suit with nothing important outside the suit. Partner doesn’t pass unless he has all three unbid suits stopped. Today’s deal is from a training session in England for players under 20 years old. West was 16-year-old Henry Rose.

The standard defense to this opening bid is to lead an ace and get a look at dummy. The suit led might well be the suit for the defense to go after, and there will still be time to attack another suit if that looks like a better chance for the defense.

The ace of clubs lead exposed the dummy. Assuming that declarer had the seven solid diamonds that he promised, the only suit that offered any chance for the defense was spades.

Rose saw that declarer could still prevail after a low spade shift. Dummy’s jack would lose to partner’s presumed queen. A spade back to the ace and the nine of spades continuation could be countered if South didn’t cover with dummy’s 10. There would be no way to reach partner’s king of spades. Rose solved this problem nicely by shifting to the nine of spades! Dummy’s 10 was covered by partner’s queen and a spade came back to Rose’s ace. Now the six of spades allowed the defense to take all four of their spade tricks and the contract was defeated. Nice play! Bob Jones welcomes readers’ responses sent in care of this newspaper or to Tribune Content Agency, LLC., 16650 Westgrove Dr., Suite 175, Addison, TX 75001. Email responses may be sent to tcaeditors@tribune.com.

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