Thanks for today’s deal goes to Larry Cohen. Have a look at his excellent website: www.larryco.com. Cohen was South, and he tells this story on himself.
Cohen believes that a pre-empt should be wide-ranging when partner is a passed hand, so he chose to bid two hearts with the South hand rather than one heart. That ended the auction, although West might well have competed to three diamonds. West shifted accurately to a trump when his diamond lead held the trick. East made the excellent play of inserting his jack of hearts, losing to Cohen’s king. Note that the defense would have had no chance had East played his ace of hearts instead.
Cohen had choices. He could play on spades right away, hoping the suit split 3-3 or that the player with only two spades had the singleton ace of hearts remaining. He could lead a high heart, hoping that the defenders wouldn’t cash out correctly or that the ace of clubs was with East for his opening bid. He chose to lead the jack of diamonds instead, hoping that the defense would make a mistake or that he could guess clubs correctly if the defenders put him to that test.
West won with his queen and led a heart to East’s ace. East shifted to a low club. Crunch time! Cohen decided, reasonably, to rise with his king of clubs, West won with the ace, returned a club to the jack and queen, and East accurately cashed the ace of diamonds for down one. It was really annoying to find that the spades were 3-3 all along. Oh well!
