ACES ON BRIDGE

“Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.”

— T.S. Eliot

In today’s slam, if diamonds are 4-3, you can establish the suit and set up a discard. You win the diamond ace at trick one, draw trumps, cash the club ace and ruff a club. When you ruff a diamond to hand, East’s 10 warns you that perhaps the diamonds are not going to break. Indeed, when you cross to the heart eight and lead another diamond, East discards a club. How will you continue?

Since you can no longer establish a diamond winner, you must instead focus on a spade-diamond squeeze against West. One idea would be to reduce West to the doubleton spade king and a master diamond, and throw him in with a diamond. However, because South has the long trumps, there is no entry to dummy to achieve the throw-in. You must aim for a simple squeeze, and that requires you to duck a trick to tighten the screws on West.

If you think about it, you will realize that the only convenient moment to rectify the count is now! Discard a spade on the third round of diamonds, and West will win the trick. He can exit safely with a top diamond, which you ruff, but he will have no answer when you run the trumps.

His last three cards will be the spade K-J and the diamond jack sitting under dummy’s doubleton spade ace and diamond nine. He must discard the spade jack to ensure that dummy’s diamond isn’t high. You will then let go of the diamond nine from dummy and score the last two tricks with the spade ace and queen.

ANSWER: The three-spade call is forcing here (the only non-forcing action is to pass three hearts). Your hand looks suitable for slam, but your partner hasn’t promised a good hand yet. Cue-bid four clubs and be prepared to give up over a sign-off in four spades.