“I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers, then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bridge is a game of mistakes. You have to take advantage of your opponents’ errors and hope they don’t take advantage of yours. In today’s deal from the Fall Nationals last year in Hawaii, Vardana Vidwans, playing with Rajeev Gupta, declared four spades after an informative auction.

Consider the diamond suit here. Since West had shown both the red suits himself, East felt cornered when his partner led the diamond five and dummy played low. (The jack was certainly an option to confuse the defenders.) Could this possibly be an underlead of the diamond ace? Trying not to spoil his partner’s brilliancy, East decided to play the diamond king on dummy’s eight – and that was all the help Vardana needed. The play did not cost a trick – but what it did was take out East’s only sure entry, and that turned out to be critical.

Declarer won the diamond ace and took her first good view when she played a spade to dummy’s ace and finessed in trumps. Then she drew East’s queen and made her second nice play when she cashed the club ace and king, rejecting the finesse. She then exited with the diamond jack to West, who was obliged to win the trick. That player now had no black-suit exit, and so had to open up hearts or give a ruff and discard. Either way, declarer was home with 10 tricks.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: It is right to pass one no-trump, despite your nice intermediates. You have only a flat eight-count, so game chances are unlikely to be great. If I were vulnerable at teams, you might sell me on a two-no-trump invitation, but I would not make the call if I was obliged to go through Stayman. That would give the opponents too much information as to what to lead.