Bridge

While breaking the transfer with the leap to four spades may have been a marginal action, your final contract is superb. How would you play the spade slam when West leads the club queen?

The best plan is to win the club ace and draw trumps in three rounds. After crossing to the club king, eliminating that suit, try a heart to East’s six and your queen. The only dangerous situation is when the full deal is as shown today.

West should read his partner’s heart six as the start of an echo to show a doubleton. (Since he knows that East has a Yarborough, he ought to get this right.) West should now be able to work out that if he wins his heart king, he will be endplayed. A red-suit return would concede an extra trick, either to the heart nine or to South’s diamond jack. A club return would give declarer a ruff-and-discard for the losing diamond.

Suppose, therefore, that West plays low, allowing South’s heart queen to win. If you have not considered this situation, pause to think how you would continue from this point. It is no good crossing to the diamond king and playing a heart to the jack. West will win and exit safely with the 10 of hearts, killing the heart discard.

Remarkably, the winning continuation is to cross to the diamond king and run the heart nine when East follows low! Here, West can win with the 10, but now he is well and truly endplayed.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Bid one diamond and try not to sound too depressed about it as you do! Passing one club doubled is a huge gamble – partner may have a huge distributional hand and one club might come home, while a partscore or even game was on for your side. So make the call that is least likely to excite partner, and hope it stays fine for you.