ACES ON BRIDGE

“The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.” — Arthur Koestler

In today’s deal, facing a one-diamond opener, North sensibly decided to drive his hand to game, thus responded two clubs. If his side wanted to play in hearts, it would be better to play from his partner’s side, and the fit could still come to light later. If you respond one heart, you can never really describe your assets properly after that.

Now switch to declarer’s seat in three no-trump on a spade lead. After the spade queen holds at trick one, you have seven fast tricks. Where will you find two more? The right thing to do is to try the heart finesse first. When the heart queen holds, you might change tack from your original plan of playing clubs from the top.

The heart finesse is a discovery play, to determine the goal from the club suit (in other words, whether to play for 3-3 clubs or to protect against 4-2 clubs). By taking the heart finesse, you learn how to play clubs. When the finesse wins, you can afford to duck a round of clubs as your safest route to four tricks in the suit, given that dummy is entryless outside the clubs. If the heart finesse had failed, you would have relied on a 3-3 club split.

Incidentally, if the hearts in dummy had been 10-9-6-3, you might have led a heart to the queen, then cashed the ace before tackling clubs, since if either the king or jack fell under the ace, you would have had a guaranteed route to nine tricks by setting up a third heart winner for your side.

ANSWER: A call of four clubs is forcing, showing five or more clubs and four hearts, asking your partner for cooperation in a possible slam. You don’t have quite enough to drive to slam, but by letting partner know what you have, you can try to engage his cooperation. Also note that four no-trump by him on his next turn would be discouraging, not Blackwood.