Embark on a voyage of pointed discovery

By Phillip Alder

Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest English authors of the 18th century, wrote, “In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.”

Bridge columns in newspapers must be concise, but one hopes that does not result in a loss of accuracy — maybe just the omission of some secondary analysis.

In today’s deal, South must go on a voyage of pointed discovery. He is in four spades. West starts the defense with three rounds of hearts, everyone following. How should South continue? North might have opened two no-trump, but he had too many quacks for my taste. However, then he was clearly worth the jump-raise to four spades. South starts with three top losers: two hearts and one diamond. He must find the spade queen to make his contract. Count the points. Dummy has 19, and declarer has 8. That leaves 13 for the defenders, but thus far only 7 have been seen in the West hand. Either defender could hold the spade queen. So, is it a guess?

Maybe ... and maybe not.

At trick four, South should play a diamond from the board to his jack. Here, West will presumably win the trick with his ace and return a minor.

Now East is known to have the spade queen because West would have opened the bidding with that card in addition to his other honors.

If East turned up with the diamond ace, declarer would have to guess the location of the spade queen. But that would only happen in real life, not in a teaching deal!