Bridge

Today’s hand features former Danish Junior World Champion Jacob Ron in fine form. When East rather aggressively doubled three hearts for takeout, West went for the jugular, converting the double to penalties by passing.

Still, the contract looks likely to go one down, does it not? The spade-jack lead to East’s ace will be followed by the return of the spade three (suit-preference signal for a club return) for a ruff. Now the defense collects two clubs, and East leads another spade. Even if South ruffs this with the queen of trumps, declarer still needs to ruff a club in dummy, and thus will eventually lose a trump trick.

However, when East played the spade ace at trick one, Ron dropped his king under it! Not unreasonably, East switched to a diamond. Declarer took this with dummy’s queen, shifted to the heart eight to East’s king and his ace, then finessed dummy’s heart nine and cashed the jack.

Returning to hand with a diamond, he drew West’s last trump, then cashed his last diamond and heart winner, reducing to an ending in which both dummy and East had come down to holding two spades and two clubs. Ron exited with his spade two to East’s eight. When East cashed the spade queen, declarer made the next key play of discarding a club from hand. Now East was endplayed, forced to concede a trick either to dummy’s spade 10 or club king for Ron’s ninth trick.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Open one no-trump, not one heart. When you have a balanced hand with a five-card major in the no-trump range, you normally have an option as to what to open. With 17 points, upgrade the hand to open the major and then jump in no-trump. With less, as here, unless your honor-structure is skewed, ignore the major and open one no-trump.