A matter of aesthetics

Author

Marcelo Branco

I have sometimes tried to convince some of my friends to learn Bridge. I believe I am not a very good teacher.

After the first few lessons in which the basic mechanics of the game were introduced, we dealt out hands and the player with more high-card points became declarer -- no auction, no trump suit. His partner became the dummy. And some strange stuff often made me lose a bit of my temper and spoil the lesson.

For example, when I saw declarer handle a suit such as Kx opposite AQJxx by starting with the Queen, or sometimes the Ace, I felt some nausea stir up in my stomach. I interrupted the play and asked: don't you realize that this is an assault against both logic and aesthetics?

By an ironic twist of fate, one day I had Ax opposite KJxxx and had to deal with this suit by starting with a small to the King. This play, apparently so nonsensical, later inspired an article written by Terence Reese, in which he mentioned that it was so weird, and remarking that without that "assault on aesthetics" the contract could not be made.

This is the hand I played and which inspired him:

The contract is 5 Clubs, and the lead is the Queen of hearts.

​After ruffing the second heart trick, the King of trumps won the next trick. And the Jack of trumps won the following trick, but trumps were 4-1. LHO (the opening leader) had Axxx. To play another trump would be fatal -- LHO would win the Ace and lead another heart, forcing dummy to spend its last trump. The best that declarer could do was to run diamonds, hoping for a 3-2 break there.

But he had to be careful! He had to plan on discarding 4 spades on the dummy in the diamonds, which mean that he had to cash an early spade trick. He also had to keep a late entry to the hand, to protect against the case in which West ruffed a diamond and dummy overruffed.

Play it out without starting with the unnatural play of a small spade to the King to see how declarer fares.