BridgeBridge

On today’s deal from the World Championships held in Rhodes eight years ago, the hero was Artur Wasik – and I would bet you could not guess what country he was representing. The answer is that he was playing for Spain, which has a fairly generous set of rules about what a bridge player needs to qualify as a resident.

As South, Artur reached five clubs after West had shown a two-suiter over Artur’s opening bid of one heart. The defense led the spade ace, and dummy put down a very disappointing collection, with the spade king-queen being completely wasted values. West switched to a diamond at trick two, giving nothing away. With no entries to dummy, Wasik took this trick with his diamond ace and played ace and jack of clubs. He ruffed East’s diamond return in hand and decided correctly that if West had a doubleton club, he was a heavy favorite to hold a singleton heart. If so, the odds favored that singleton to be the nine or 10. He crossed to a trump in dummy and led the jack of hearts, covered all round, and the sight of the heart 10 falling from West was a very welcome one.

That allowed Wasik to cross back over to dummy’s last trump and finesse against the heart nine to make his contract. Had West produced the heart nine, declarer would have been four down, but Wasik’s count of the hand was accurate, and he had his 11 tricks.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Overcall one spade. Passing is for the birds here – you have to get into your opponents’ auctions whenever you can. Although your best suit is diamonds, you want to take up as much bidding space as possible to prevent the opponents from finding their heart fit.