Aces on bridge

“The moment a man begins to talk about technique, that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.”

-- Raymond Chandler

Today’s deal shows one of the world’s best technicians at work on a grand slam. Geir Helgemo sat South, and when he heard about his partner’s two aces, he immediately jumped to seven no-trump. This was, for him, the last board of an eventually unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the mixed pairs final at Ostend last summer.

West led the diamond 10 to dummy’s ace, and at this point, Helgemo could see 12 top tricks. The working spade finesse might bring in the 13th trick in a pedestrian way, but, of course, the first thing Helgemo did was to have a look at possible squeezes. So he went on to cash the other two top diamonds, discarding two more spades and getting the interesting news that East could not follow to the third diamond.

Helgemo followed up by taking his six heart winners, reducing to a five-card ending where East kept three clubs and two spades while West had one diamond, one spade and three clubs.

On the last heart, West has to discard a club to keep his singleton spade honor, while East has to throw a spade to keep clubs guarded. So no matter which opponent has the spade king, declarer should make the hand by leading a spade to the ace. That line would fail only if West has stayed silent with 7-5 distribution.

Note that in seven hearts, an initial club lead destroys the entry position, as declarer cannot cash the three top diamonds safely.

ANSWER: It is tempting to rebid one no-trump to show the basic nature of the hand, but I’d prefer a somewhat more robust heart stopper. Since my partner has guaranteed five spades (with four, he would have made a negative double), I can raise spades, knowing we have an eight-card fit. It may not be elegant, but it serves the purpose.