Bridge - The Scotsman 16/07/12

Published on 16/07/2012 00:00

This was one of the most talked-about deals of the European Championships.

Many pairs reached 6C on an unopposed auction. There were no problems when North led a spade, a diamond or a club: declarer discarded his heart on a top diamond, drew trump and conceded a spade. But many Norths led the two of hearts. Declarer lost the first trick to the queen and South returned a trump.

The simple line is to win the club in dummy, return to hand with a second club and take the spade finesse. If that scores, there is a club left in dummy to ruff the third spade should that be necessary. A more complicated approach is to try to avoid a finesse by discarding all five of West’s losing spades. Two will go on the top diamonds. Assuming that South has the ace of hearts – North would surely not underlead that card? – declarer could lead the king of hearts and ruff away the ace to establish one extra heart trick. If North started with 9xx the nine drops under the jack and hearts are good for three discards. No-one actually took this successful line, though Iceland made 6C on the lead of the nine of hearts.

There are too few entries to dummy to combine the options, so the journalists in attendance were left to debate the relative merits of the two possible lines. Their conclusion? That South should win a deceptive ace of hearts at trick one so that declarer could never read the position.