ACES ON BRIDGE

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

-- G. B. Shaw

The three famous bridge players named Hackett -- Paul and his sons Jason and Justin -- later augmented to four. Barbara Stawowy, who has won World Championship gold and silver medals while playing for the German Women’s Team, is married to Justin Hackett. Here, she is at work in the 2011 Women’s European Championships, held in Poznan, Poland.

As a note to the auction, North’s three-diamond call showed 10-12 points, plus exactly three-card spade support. Hackett went straight to the spade game, and West led a heart. With possible losers in each black suit, declarer’s focus was to avoid a guess in the diamond suit.

She won the heart lead with dummy’s ace, then led a low spade to her jack, finessing into the safe hand. West won with the queen, and back came another heart, taken with the king in dummy, a diamond departing from South. After drawing the rest of the trumps, ending in dummy, Hackett continued by taking her second black-suit finesse, West capturing the club jack with the queen. But from that side of the table, no damage could be done; South eventually dumped another diamond on dummy’s fifth club. Just one further trick -- a diamond -- had to be lost.

Of course, at double-dummy declarer can always do better, but only by endangering the contract against an unfavorable lie of the cards.

For the record, an argument could certainly be made for running the spade 10 from dummy at trick two.

ANSWER: Despite your own hand indicating otherwise, this double just shows real extras and is not specifically for penalties. With an unshown four-card major, bid two hearts and try to look as cheerful as your miserable hand will permit.