The Aces on Bridge: Monday, August 23, 2010

Dealer: West Vul: None	North ♠ 3 ♥ K 7 6 ♦ A 7 6 ♣ Q J 10 9 6 4
West ♠ K Q J 10 9 8 ♥ 8 ♦ 10 5 ♣ A K 8 3		East ♠ 6 4 ♥ A 4 3 ♦ J 9 4 3 2 ♣ 7 5 2
	South ♠ A 7 5 2 ♥ Q J 10 9 5 2 ♦ K Q 8 ♣ —

 

South	West	North	East
	1♠	2♣	Pass
4♥	4♠	5♥	Dbl.
All Pass

Opening Lead: Your call!

“It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else.”

— Samuel Rogers

All this week’s deals come from the Junior European Championships held in Romania last summer. During the two-week event, there was an under-25 championship, and in parallel with that, a one-week tournament for girls followed by a schools event.

Europe was well represented, with even some of the smaller countries fielding teams in the minor events. For example, the Estonian girls’ team started the Championships off with a 14-16 loss to the Netherlands — not bad against much more experienced opposition. (Incidentally, the Dutch and Poles — together with the Swedes — have been dominating this event lately. It is certainly not coincidental that the first two countries have set up sporting organizations that ally with the Olympic Federations, and run their programs with benchmarks and training schemes.)

Today’s deal helped to keep the match close, as Estonia’s Tuul Saav first pushed the Dutch North-South to the five-level, then found the only lead to defeat five hearts.

As West, Saav judged that her partner, Erika Parn, must have something useful to explain her double, and in that case, there should be no rush to try to cash black tricks. Accordingly, Tuul led her singleton trump. Parn won the heart ace and returned a second heart. Declarer could now ruff only one spade in dummy, so was a trick short of her contract. Well done — on any other lead declarer can bring home 11 tricks.

For details of Bobby Wolff’s autobiography, The Lone Wolff, contact theLoneWolff@bridgeblogging.com. If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, please leave a comment at this blog. Reproduced with permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc., Copyright 2010. If you are interested in reprinting The Aces on Bridge column, contact reprints@unitedmedia.com.