Bridge

On today’s deal from the qualifying round robin of the world championships held in Tunisia seven years ago, France took on Italy.

In one room the Italian East had pre-empted and had stolen the deal in two hearts, down a few tricks, undoubled.

By contrast, in the other room the French East, Michel Perron, would never open a weak-two on a suit like that, so he passed, and South got to open a weak no-trump, raised to game by North. West, Chemla, naturally led a top club, and South took this with the ace and continued the suit. Perron now calmly discarded a small spade, so West shifted to a low diamond, and that went around to Bocchi’s diamond jack.

Declarer now needed four spade tricks, even assuming the heart finesse was working, and he had to guess spades to get them. This was a position where East was virtually sure not to have started life with four spades to the queen, since he was highly unlikely to have thrown a spade from that holding.

Therefore it really came down to whether Perron was more likely to have discarded from an original holding of three small spades or from queen-third. In the end declarer played a spade to dummy’s jack and went three down instead of making his contract. Whether his play is right or not, I cannot help thinking that he would surely have gotten the position right had Perron not discarded a spade. What do you think?

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Pass, and do not overcall two hearts. Yes, you have six hearts, but the suit is feeble, you hold weak length in the opponents’ suit, and you have no reason to get involved facing a passed partner.