ACES On BRIDGE

“I’m a games player by nature. Don’t get me wrong. Nothing that involves movement. Like leaving my chair.”

— Maureen Lipman

One of my occasional correspondents is Maureen Hiron, who lives in Spain but writes a newspaper column for Ireland. She commented that she had first met this type of hand early in her bridge career, and her partner bawled her out for going down. When a similar situation arose a short while later, she knew what to do. As Hiron said, the good bridge player only makes the same mistake four times. By the fifth time, she has learned her lesson.

Barring bizarre distribution, the only thing that could go wrong in six hearts was the trumps breaking 4-1 or worse.

If West holds the length, you are doomed; but if East has the critical holding, you may be able to survive as long as you take the appropriate precautions early.

Against the slam, West cashed the diamond ace and continued the suit. Hiron won in hand and noticed that if East did indeed hold jack-fourth in trumps, she would need to reduce her trump holding to parity with East, ending with the lead in dummy.

So at trick three, she took the spade ace then ruffed a spade, reducing South’s trump holding to five. Then came the heart ace and a heart to the king to find the bad news.

However, another spade ruff reduced the South trump holding to the same length as East’s. Hiron could then take her minor-suit winners, ending in dummy with the club ace, and she was happy to see East follow throughout. In the twocard ending, a spade from dummy caught East’s trump jack under South’s Q-10 of hearts.

ANSWER: This is a problem with no sensible answer. If you bid two diamonds, you will force the hand to game without any real confidence in a fit or source of tricks. You could raise either clubs or hearts to the three-level to invite game, which somewhat overstates your trump support in either case, or you could go very low by bidding only two hearts. If you twisted my arm, I would bid three hearts, but don’t expect me to like it.