BRIDGE A comedy play in three acts

Lucille Ball said, “I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”

Only a brave person with a strange sense of humor would find anything funny in today’s deal. Maybe that was in the back of Shakespeare’s mind when he chose “A Comedy of Errors” as the title for his play.

After the given auction to four spades, West led the diamond queen: two, seven, three. South won the second diamond lead with his ace and drew trumps ending in the dummy. Next, he led a low club to his ace and a second club, playing low from the board when West’s queen appeared. The best West could do was to cash his heart ace, and declarer claimed 10 tricks. How many errors were made?

There were three mistakes. The first was East’s. Why hadn’t West led a heart, despite East’s (debatable) raise? Presumably because he had a suit headed by the ace without the king. So East should have striven to get on lead to play a heart through South’s king. The diamond-queen lead showed the queenjack. (The dummy made it most unlikely that this was a short-suit lead.) East should have overtaken with the diamond king at trick one, a play that would have marked him with the diamond 10 as well. However South maneuvered, East would have gained the lead, probably with the diamond 10, to make the key heart switch.

Once South had dodged that arrow, he should have made an avoidance play in clubs, leading low to his 10 on the first round.

When South didn’t do that, West should have unblocked his club queen under South’s ace. East would have won a trick with the club jack.