“If you are not respected as subtle, you will be regarded as sure.” – Baltasar Gracian

The normal order of things has been reestablished at the Dyspeptics Club.

West has returned from a long sabbatical and appears to be in prime form.

On today’s deal he showed an unexpected flicker of subtlety, both in the play and the post-mortem.

The spade jack looked to be West’s best lead against four hearts, and declarer took the trick in dummy to play a trump.

East won his ace in case there were ruffs looming in both black suits and switched to his singleton club, with West winning with the ace.

At this point it looked certain that West was going to return a low club.

Instead, after laborious counting, West worked out that the one missing club was the jack, so he pinned it by returning the queen.

South automatically put on the king from dummy, and East took his ruff and exited with a spade, leaving declarer with no home for the losing diamond in his hand.

Down one.

Afterward, while gloating over his own defense, West raised a surprisingly astute point.

The correct safety play would have been for South to allow the club queen to hold.

The next round of clubs could be ruffed in hand, trumps drawn, and now the club king would furnish a discard for the diamond loser.

It is true that South had no particular reason to expect the second round of clubs to be trumped, but the safety play would have been neat – and foolproof.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Jump to four spades.

This may look extreme with only an eight-count, but if partner has a typical minimum opening bid with diamonds and spades (say four spades, four diamonds and a doubleton heart, with two aces and a king), you might be almost lay down for 10 tricks without a finesse.