ACES ON BRIDGE

“See, the conquering hero comes!

Sound the trumpet, beat the drums!”

— Thomas Morell

Today's deceptive declarer play was originally composed by Julian Pottage.

West leads the spade jack against three no-trump. As declarer, you can develop more than enough extra winners, given time. The danger is that if East holds the spade ace and West the heart ace, the defenders are likely to be able to take the first six tricks. How can you minimize the danger that East wins the first spade and switches to a heart?

The answer is simple once you think of it: Get ready to dump the spade queen (or king, but that might be a bit too flashy) under the ace. Playing you for king-queen doubleton, East will surely continue spades. You win the second round of spades and cash the minor-suit aces, cross to dummy cheaply in clubs and take the diamond finesse. West can take no more than one trick in each major.

Note that if you were to duck the spade seven, West could leave his partner on lead for a heart shift, while covering with the spade nine would allow West to clear the suit. Now you would need to read the cards very well to make.

You could recover by cashing only two clubs and then exiting in spades to endplay West, or even by running all the clubs for a strip-squeeze, but those lines are far from obvious.

It is likely that you would cross in clubs to take a finesse in one of the red suits and go down.

East might have switched to hearts at trick two anyway, but he would be more likely to get it right if you had played small.

ANSWER: Raising to five clubs applies maximum pressure to the opponents, who surely have game of their own, and likely a slam. However, tactically speaking, bidding four clubs is probably a subtler approach. When the opponents bid at the four-level or double and respond in a major, they may stop there. If they act at the five-level, raising to slam gets easier.