ACES ON BRIDGE

“A trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you know about it, it’s a challenge.” — China Mieville

The contract of four spades looks extremely straightforward once you can see that trumps break. But sometimes appearances are slightly deceptive. The trap in today’s deal is one you would never fall for, right?

When dummy comes down, the quick red-suit losers plus the requirement to play for ruffs strongly suggest that you need spades to behave. That being said, ruffing two diamonds in dummy or two hearts in hand would generate enough tricks. The problem with entries seems to argue for ruffing diamonds in hand, in which case you can play for seven tricks from the minors and three from the trump suit. That is indeed so, but you do have to be just a little careful.

When the club 10 is led, declarer must win with a high club in hand, leaving the club queen as an entry to dummy. Then declarer cashes two high spades and plays three rounds of diamonds, ruffing in hand. Thanks to the unblock at trick one, he can now use the club entry to dummy to ruff the last diamond in hand.

If you block yourself in clubs, you have to start the crossruff without drawing two rounds of trumps, or allow the opponents to play a third round of spades after you have played two. In either event, you will find yourself unable to make your game today. In the first case, you will run into an overruff, and in the second case, you make one fewer trump trick than you need.

ANSWER: Your partner’s failure to overcall suggests no great holding in either diamonds or spades. Does that mean you should go passive with a trump or club lead? I suppose that is possible, but my instinct is to lead diamonds, hoping to get the suit going on defense, perhaps in order to try to establish additional trump tricks for your side.