“Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.” – Samuel Johnson

Playing two-over-one, after North showed values with spade support, South closed his eyes and decided to take a shot at the spade slam.

It was up to the defense to prove him wrong.

The key to the defense was the signal at trick one.

It is good technique to interpret third hand’s play as count when a king is led against a suit slam.

Especially with the diamond queen in dummy, attitude signals were irrelevant, so East could play the diamond two to the first trick to show an odd number of diamonds.

West therefore could place South with a singleton diamond on the bidding; a holding of three small diamonds was utterly incompatible with the auction.

The natural, but inferior, defense was for West to shift to a trump (a futile move, since declarer cannot ruff three hearts in dummy in any case).

Had he done so, declarer could have won in hand, played heart ace, a heart ruff low, a diamond ruff, a heart ruff high and a diamond ruff.

Then he could draw trumps and claim with six spades, one heart, two heart ruffs and three clubs.

Instead, West found the only play to trick two that might have any value for the defense, namely a club.

This judolike move attacked the opposition through its own strength by preventing declarer from both ruffing hearts and cashing all of dummy’s top clubs.

Whether declarer played to ruff three hearts in dummy, or to cash out the clubs, 11 tricks were the limit.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Bid two no-trump for takeout into a minor if you feel aggressive.

A double here would be penalties (suggesting you were unable to double on the previous round because you play negative doubles).

Partner is marked with some extras, so try to push the opponents up a level and see what happens!