ACES ON BRIDGE

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

— Oscar Wilde

There is little reason to upgrade this South hand to a one-no-trump opening, but the original player needed a swing or two and took the high road. An inelegant sequence then saw him at the helm in six notrump on West's safe heart lead.

If hearts were 5-1, declarer had to guess if he should insert the heart nine at trick one. He did well to play the seven from dummy, reasoning that West would consider a lead from eight-fifth to be safer than 10-fifth. He took the heart 10 with his ace and rattled off the remaining hearts, shedding two diamonds and a spade from hand. He planned to play on clubs at some stage, but there was no rush.

The run of the hearts put it to East, who sagely let go of two spades and two diamonds.

Declarer then cashed the club ace and finessed the club jack, discovering the bad news, but he was not done yet.

When South crossed to the spade ace, East was really in trouble since he could no longer disguise his full distribution. Pitching a diamond would see declarer play one to the ace and another back to the king, dropping the queen for his 12th trick, but East's actual choice of a club fared no better. Declarer did not have the two entries needed to establish and cash the long club, but there was no need. South came to the diamond ace, cashed the club king and put East on play with the fourth club, dummy discarding spades. East then had to lead into dummy's diamond tenace to concede the slam.

ANSWER: Lead the diamond four. You will surely lead one of your long suits, even after this invitational auction, and a diamond has more to gain than a club because you already have a club trick — there are more winners to set up in diamonds. More important, if you can set up diamonds, you have a certain reentry, not just a possible one.