Bridge
In today’s contract of four spades, what is the best line to produce 10 tricks?
After you draw trumps, one possibility is to try to eliminate clubs without letting East gain the lead. If you can manage this, you will later be able to endplay West with the heart jack, forcing him to lead a diamond or concede a ruff and discard. This line of play involves crossing to dummy with a trump in order to lead the club nine, hoping to duck this trick to West. However, today, East would cover with the club 10. Unfortunately, from your perspective, sooner or later East will gain the lead in clubs, and the defense will end up with three diamond tricks and a club trick.
A better strategy avoids any such requirement for West to hold two of the missing high clubs. The plan requires you to duck the opening lead. Suppose West shifts to a trump — his best play. You win it with dummy’s 10, cross to hand with the ace of trumps and throw dummy’s club nine on the heart ace.
After cashing the club ace and ruffing the club six in dummy, you cross back to hand with a trump and lead the heart jack. West plays the queen, and dummy throws a diamond. West now has to lead away from his diamond ace or concede a ruff and discard: contract made. Along the way, you have managed to lose two tricks in hearts with a singleton facing the ace.
Bid with the aces
South holds:
| “9 7 | |
| “K Q 10 8 | |
| “A 10 5 | |
| “K 7 4 2 |
| South | West | North | East |
| 1 “ | Dbl. | ||
| ? |
Answer: Bid one heart rather than redoubling. The idea behind a redouble is that you expect to be able to penalize the opponents — but here you can be fairly sure they have a runout available in spades. So develop your hand with a natural and forcing call of one heart. In no way does this limit your hand by the failure to redouble.