Bridge

On today’s deal, since as little as the diamond queen opposite would give you (South) chances of 10 tricks, you decided to bid game at your second turn. How would you play four spades when West begins with the ace and king of hearts?

Suppose you ruff the second heart lead and draw trumps. That will surely prove to be futile; even if trumps split 4-3, you would have no trumps left to protect yourself against the run of the hearts when you knocked out the club ace.

Instead you ought to tackle clubs immediately, knocking out the ace before playing trumps. When East takes the club ace on the first or second round, he will return another heart. Now is the moment for your second key move. You discard a diamond from your hand. Do you see the point of this? Dummy now has no hearts left, so make full use of his little assets — the singleton trump. If the defenders persist with hearts, you will be able to ruff with dummy’s singleton eight of trumps. You can then return to your hand with the diamond ace to draw trumps with your four top spades.

This line of play requires the clubs to be 2-2 (or for the defense to fail to take their ruff) because otherwise the defenders can take one diamond trick, one heart trick, and two clubs. But since any other line is hopeless, you might as well do the best with what you’ve got!

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Pass, smoothly. Maybe East is playing a little joke by psyching (bidding a suit he does not have, to try to steal your game). For sure, you cannot clarify this to your partner by doubling (it would be for takeout) or bidding no-trump, so pass initially and then try to clear up the position on the next round.