ACES ON BRIDGE

“I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything.” -- Charles Dickens

As South, in four hearts, you can see you have one club and two diamond losers off the top. Your first instinct might be to go for spade ruffs in dummy, but the problem with re-entries to hand makes this awkward.

Imagine you ruff a spade in dummy, cross to your club winner and ruff a second spade. So far, so good; but when you draw trumps, the bad break means you will never establish your long club.

Curiously, you can survive a 4-1 trump break, but not a 4-1 club break, when you would simply have four top minor-suit losers. Once you see this, you may see the winning line of taking your spade ace and ducking a club at trick two. This allows you to be more flexible by retaining club entries to both hands.

If the defenders play on diamonds, you ruff two diamonds in hand, drawing trumps with dummy’s excellent spots. If they play on spades, you ruff two spades in dummy, making South the master hand.

Similarly, if the defense returns hearts, you win in hand, ruff a spade, return to hand with a trump and ruff a second spade. That lets you play a club to your hand, draw trumps and concede two diamonds at the end for 10 tricks.

The lesson of this hand is that when you have a 4-4 trump fit, you do not have to decide on the master hand immediately. You may need to wait until you have set up your ruffs. Also, remember to protect your entries to retain trump control.

ANSWER: Your partner should have extra values and something very close to a 5-3-1-4 pattern. My guess as to our side’s best game is four hearts -- though it may be more challenging to play than the 4-4 club fit. Regardless, I would raise to four hearts and let partner retreat to the club game if he doesn’t want to play hearts.