“From somewhere low down, his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.” - Vladimir Nabokov

Your partner leads the king and ace of spades against South’s five hearts, declarer following twice.

He then plays the spade nine to dummy’s jack.

Dummy has an enormous hand on the bidding.

Only his fear of two losing spades stopped him from bidding a slam.

It is surely impossible that there are any more side losers.

Partner clearly does not think so, or he would not continue the attack on spades – and his choice of spades to lead is also intriguing.

After all, where will any further defensive tricks come from?

Clearly, if declarer is about to follow to this trick, you will set the contract, so you should assume that is not the case.

In any event the auction tells you that partner has seven spades, so declarer cannot have a third spade.

There is still a chance, though, if partner’s trump holding is as good as jack-third.

If you ruff in with the heart nine, declarer will have to overruff and may promote a trump trick for partner.

This particular type of trump promotion, when one defender ruffs in to force declarer to ruff high, is called an uppercut.

That example was fairly easy; it can be much more complex.

If you do ruff with the heart nine to set the game, remember to thank partner for making your life easy by leading a losing spade, not a winning one, making it less challenging for you to wake up and ruff high!

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Double for takeout.

Yes, you would rather have four spades than three, and you are minimum for your action, but as a general rule the hand with short hearts should strain to act in this position.

Here, if you pass, the opponents could blow you out of the water by raising hearts, so get in quickly.