Bridge

The auction poses an awkward problem for South. In the protective seat he is clearly too good to bid just one spade, which is consistent with a much weaker hand. Similarly, a jump to two spades shows a good suit but no more than an opening bid – also not really doing justice to the hand. By contrast, doubling and then bidding spades shows a good hand, and when North invites to game, South has enough in hand to bid game directly. It is not easy to get to three no-trump, though there are nine winners there.

Against four spades, West leads the heart king and, seeing South’s heart queen, shifts to the diamond jack. South wins in hand and realizes that to succeed he must build a heart trick from the rather unpromising material at his disposal. He crosses to the spade ace, leads the heart 10, and throws a club loser away.

West can win this trick and play another diamond, but South again wins in hand, goes to dummy with a trump, and plays the heart nine, throwing his diamond loser away. West scores his heart ace, the third trick for the defense, but South can throw his remaining slow club loser on the heart eight, using the final spade entry to dummy. All three of dummy’s trumps were essential entries, so declarer could not afford to draw trump before setting up the hearts (and West could have set the hand by playing a trump at trick two).

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Pass – what else can you do? Partner heard you show spades and a good hand and wants to play four hearts instead. Imagine that he has seven respectable hearts without the ace. Where would you like to play the deal? Four hearts looks best to me!