Goren on Bridge

East-West vulnerable, South deals

Today’s deal is from a rubber bridge game at moderate stakes. Declarer won the opening heart lead with the ace. He could count seven tricks on top and had to plan on getting two more. Diamonds was the obvious place to look for an extra two tricks.

South cashed the ace of diamonds and led a diamond to dummy’s jack, planning on at least two extra tricks provided the diamonds split 3-2. There might be three extra tricks if the queen was onside also. The queen was indeed onside, but East’s spade discard meant that declarer could not develop a long diamond and then get back to dummy to cash it. He belatedly tried to develop a spade trick, but East won the first spade and shifted smartly to a low club. West continued clubs when in with the ace of spades and declarer eventually lost two clubs and three spades for down one.

North was quick to criticize his partner’s play. North pointed out, correctly, that declarer would have prevailed had he played a low diamond from both hands on the first round of diamonds. The ace would then reveal the position and the marked diamond finesse would have brought home the contract. This line was safe against all 3-2 diamond splits. A kibitzer pointed out that West might have muddied the waters by playing the queen of diamonds on the first round of the suit, tempting South to win with dummy’s king. Actually, this would be a warning sign that the suit was splitting poorly and should have forced South to duck the trick. We’ll never know. 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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