ACES ON BRIDGE

“Whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.”

— Thomas Paine

As East, see if you can outplay the player at the table, when China played Brazil in the Round Robin of the 1995 Marlboro Bermuda Bowl. China had stopped in four spades, but Roberto Mello, sitting South for Brazil, facing a balanced 8-10, had gone for the spade slam on an auction that had been uninformative for the defense.

West had a choice of three side suits to lead. While a club would have doomed the slam and a heart would have handed declarer the slam on a plate, the lead of the diamond six left the fate of the contract in the balance.

Mello ruffed East's diamond ace, drew three rounds of trumps, pitching a diamond from dummy, then finessed the heart jack. East won with his queen and returned a passive diamond, allowing declarer to ruff, cash the heart ace and run all the trumps.

In the four-card ending, dummy kept two hearts, a diamond and a club. West came down to a diamond and three clubs but had to discard a club (to keep his diamond king) when declarer played a heart to dummy. As East had already been reduced to two clubs to keep the hearts guarded, declarer could finesse the club queen and run the clubs.

As is not uncommon in the defense against a double squeeze, the defenders had had the chance to break up the menace by attacking the pivot suit, clubs. If East had switched to a club when in with the heart queen, dummy would not have been able to keep a club in the ending. Communications would have been disrupted for the double squeeze.

ANSWER: You could have opened two clubs, but you would have elicited a response from partner either way. Jump to four diamonds now, an auto-splinter, self-agreeing spades as trumps with short diamonds and showing a great hand. This does not say anything about controls in the unbid suits.