Bridge

This week’s deals all come from the World Championships in Rhodes, held exactly eight years ago.

Chinese Taipei has always had a strong men’s team, and Patrick Huang is perhaps their best-known player, having helped them to two world championship silver medals. Patrick arrived late at the tournament because of business commitments. This was his very first board of the event.

The auction may look unusual, but Huang (South) could see no reason to introduce his second suit. Spades was almost certain to play as well as hearts here, no matter what his partner had. His deception helped him because West decided that on this power auction his best chance to defeat the game was to give his partner a club ruff and get a heart ruff in return – not so unreasonable really. On the lead of the club ace, Huang needed no second chance. He ruffed, drew trumps, then led the diamond 10 to West’s jack, carefully ducking in dummy to preserve the diamond queen as a threat. A second diamond went to East’s king, and a heart came back. Patrick put up the ace and exited with the jack of hearts. East did his best when he won the queen, since it could not help to duck. However, since he now had no diamonds left and could not afford to play a club, he had to play hearts to give declarer the free finesse and let him take 10 tricks.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Bid two hearts. In this auction a call of two hearts is natural and nonforcing, virtually denying holding 10 or more points since you would double with that hand. Two hearts is a slight stretch (you would be happy if your heart three were the jack), but you would hate to sell out to one no-trump here.