Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

“All by myself, wrapped in my thoughts, And building castles in Spain and in France.” – Charles d’Orleans

Bobby Wolff United Feature Syndicate

Here, Mari Carmen Santos and Maria Luisa Matut of the Spanish ladies’ team were defending against four spades by Italy. The deal shows there is no such thing as a cast-iron rule at bridge.

One rule is to lead the lowest card from three cards to an honor. However, when your hand lacks entries, it can be right to start with the honor, thus retaining the lead. In today’s auction, Matut as West knew that her partner was likely to be sitting with the diamonds over dummy, and she also knew that she was not going to regain the lead to play diamonds through again. So if ever there was a moment to lead high, not low, from a three-card suit, this was it.

It turned out that the queen of diamonds was the only lead to defeat the contract. Three rounds of diamonds forced South to ruff, and when the 4-1 spade break came to light, declarer had to discontinue drawing trumps to knock out the heart ace. Now Santos (East) could either take the heart ace on the first round and play a fourth diamond to promote her partner’s spade nine, or take the heart ace on the second round to give West a heart ruff.

Note that had West led a low diamond at trick one, declarer ducks. East wins with the jack but no longer can force declarer. The loss of tempo is fatal to the defense.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

♠ A K Q 10 5
♥ K J 8 7 2
♦ 10 6
♣ 5
SouthWestNorthEast
1 ♠Pass1 NTPass
2 ♥Pass2 ♠Pass
?

Answer: The simple solution here is to try for game by repeating the hearts to show 5-5. This seems to me to be too pushy. Change the heart two to the club two, and you would have a truly dead minimum in terms of shape and high cards. I would pass two spades and hope I can make it.