Bridge

Today’s deal sees a very nice declarer play – but a missed opportunity by the defense.

In four hearts declarer received the spade-ace lead, but now West had to find a switch. The natural play was to lead out the diamond king – nice try, but no cigar. Declarer, Zoltan Nagy of Australia won dummy’s diamond ace, drew two rounds of trump ending in dummy, and simply played a diamond to his jack and West’s queen. What was that player to do now? A club play would lose his side’s trick in that suit, and whether he played a high diamond or a low one, South would be able to use the diamond eight in dummy as a home for his club jack. Either way, South would have 10 tricks for his contract

Nicely played, but maybe West had missed his chance at trick two? He knows that his best chance to set the hand is to find his partner with a singleton diamond, but he should be able to see the danger in dummy’s diamond spots.

Therefore, perhaps what he should have done was to make the deceptive shift to a low diamond at trick two. Now declarer would have had to duck in dummy to make his contract. However, since he can see the crossruff looming against him if East has a top diamond honor, that is a play that would be far easier to find with all 52 cards on view!

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Pass, and I hope you were not seriously tempted to bid two hearts. All you have extra on offense is a sixth heart, but you have a dead-minimum hand and terrible trump intermediates. The main danger is not that two hearts may go for a number, but that partner will not trust you to have a good hand the next time you rebid your suit freely in competition.