Aces On bridge

“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own instead of someone else’s.” — Billy Wilder This deal from the first final session of the Wernher Open Pairs in Atlanta last summer gave declarers with a good nose the chance to come very close to bringing home four spades, even if not doubled. The journalist reporting this deal recounted that at his table the heart eight lead ran to the 10, jack and queen. He took a club finesse, and East won the queen to play back the heart two. This looked like suit preference to South, who put in the nine; when it held the trick, he fell from grace by playing the spade queen. The contract could now no longer be made. A better line would have been to play a club to the ace at trick four and ruff a club. Then declarer could cash the two top diamonds and lead the fourth club. When East discards, South can pitch his last diamond. After eight tricks, declarer has seven winners in the bag and West is down to his five trumps. A spade to the queen might see West slip up by winning this trick. If he does, then whether he plays a high or low trump, he scores only one more trump trick. He must return a low trump, then he is endplayed again at the next trick. Curiously, though, if West ducks his trump ace, he can then ruff the heart ace with the spade 10 and exit with a low trump to ensure his extra trump winner for down one. For the record, going one down in four spades was only a skosh below average. ANSWER: With a minimum opening bid and no club stopper, you cannot rebid two no-trump. So the choice is to rebid spades or raise diamonds. My preference would be to rebid spades at pairs. But at teams, you might consider raising diamonds, since that will guarantee to get you to a sensible fit, even if not necessarily the highestscoring part-score.