BRIDGE with Bob Jones

South in today’s deal was Australian expert Stephen Burgess. Burgess is known for opening the bidding at a high level — sometimes at the six level! A former partner once raised his six-level opening to seven holding two aces. The partner was instructed that he could never do that again unless he held all four aces.

At first glance, it seemed that the success of the contract would depend on winning finesses in both clubs and hearts. The precious eight of clubs in dummy gave the contract an extra chance, and Burgess took advantage of it. Burgess ruffed the opening diamond lead and led a low club to dummy’s eight. That was a good start.

Burgess now led a low spade toward his queen. Had the queen lost to West’s king, Burgess would still need a winning heart finesse to make his contract. East had the king of spades and he hopped up with it in order to shift to a low heart. Burgess could have tried the heart finesse for a possible overtrick, but that would have been fatal on this deal. West would have won and knocked out the ace of clubs while the spades were still blocked.

Burgess knew that he already had a good thing in his pocket and he wasn’t tempted to try for the overtrick. He rose with his ace of hearts, cashed the queen of spades, and led a club to dummy’s ace. That drew the last trump and Burgess could safely discard a heart on the ace of spades and concede only one heart trick to the defense. Nicely played!