Bridge

At rubber bridge, if you are partnering the best player in the club and your luck is in, then a bit of judicious overbidding can work wonders. Such was the case on today’s hand.

North really had no excuse whatsoever for his raise to two no-trump, but it was getting late, he was vulnerable, and his partner was an excellent dummy player.

West led the heart seven, and dummy put his hand down apologetically. Declarer saw immediately that he needed the club finesse to be right, but even then, the diamond blockage meant that he did not have nine tricks. He would need to find the spade ace with West, but if that was the case, East might well work out to duck the heart lead — knowing his partner had only a doubleton heart. Now the defenders would come to a spade and four hearts.

South eventually saw the light, and put up the heart 10 from dummy at trick one, putting East on the horns of a dilemma. If East ducked this trick, declarer would take two club finesses, unblock his king-queen of diamonds, and cross back to dummy with a club to cash his remaining minor-suit winners.

So, East won the lead and played three more rounds of hearts. But now all declarer needed to do was to advance the spade king from hand. West ducked, but with that trick in the bag, South could overtake his diamond queen with dummy’s ace, take the club finesse, and bring home nine tricks.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Pass, rather than introducing a suit (either diamonds or spades), which ought to show a hand more interested in competing than this one. Had your RHO passed, you would have felt obliged to try to improve the contract by responding. Here, your opponents will surely take you off the hook by bidding, so don’t relieve them of their responsibility!