Long suits provide copious winners

Mort Walker, who created “Beetle Bailey,” said, “It’s not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game even starts.”

At bridge, winners help you make contracts. When you have lots of winners, especially in the form of a long suit, bid up. If you take the necessary number of tricks to make your contract, it does not matter how few high-card points you had.

Look at the North hand in today’s diagram. You open one club in third chair, lefty overcalls one spade, partner makes a negative double (showing four hearts and at least 6 points, or five or six hearts and 6-9 points), and righty passes. What would you rebid? Also, would you have opened two diamonds with the West hand?

Looking at the latter question first, many players would these days, but in second chair, you ought to have a textbook hand. Since one opponent has already passed, your partner probably has a decent hand, and if so, you want to make it as easy as possible for him to judge where to play.

At the time, North rebid three clubs. Admittedly that was a jump-rebid, but it was too cautious. South understandably passed, and an excellent game contract was missed.

With eight probable tricks, North should have cue-bid two spades, asking partner to bid no-trump with a spade stopper. Here, of course, South would have been happy to continue with two no-trump, and North would have raised to game.

West probably would have led the spade 10, but he might have tried a sneak attack with the diamond five. In either case, South would have raked in at least one overtrick.