The best line turns the light on

Maurice Chevalier, who died in 1972, said, "Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it."

Sometimes bridge players claim the light was bad when they make a mistake, saying that they could not see a suit properly. That applied when this deal was played many years ago.

If you were South in three no-trump, what would be your line of play after West leads the club king?

Whenever you are in no-trump, always count your top tricks, your instant winners, first. Here, you have seven: four spades, one heart, one diamond and one club. You need two more tricks from somewhere.

The original declarer could not resist playing back a club, but West went in with his queen and shifted to the diamond queen. South could not recover.

Instead, declarer should have looked more closely at the heart suit. As long as East had one of the honors, there were three tricks available in that suit, which would be sufficient for the contract. So, South should have played a spade to dummy's queen, then run the heart eight. It loses to the jack and West shifts to diamonds, but declarer wins in his hand, leads a spade to dummy's ace, then runs the heart queen. What that holds, South repeats the heart finesse and claims nine tricks.

Phillip Alder is running a bridge cruise from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2 out of and back to Fort Lauderdale that will go around the Caribbean and into the Panama Canal. Details are at www.phillipalderbridge.com.

Copyright 2009, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

North

@date2: 07-03-09

@handtext: SPADES A Q 6

HEARTS Q 8 5

DIAMONDS 7 4

CLUBS J 9 8 5 4

West East

@handtext:SPADES 9 2 SPADES 10 8 7 4

HEARTS J 7 HEARTS K 6 4 3

DIAMONDS Q J 10 8 DIAMONDS K 9 5 2

CLUBS K Q 10 7 6 CLUBS 2

South

@handtext: SPADES K J 5 3

HEARTS A 10 9 2

DIAMONDS A 6 3

CLUBS A 3

@vulnerable:Dealer: South

Vulnerable: East-West