ACES ON BRIDGE

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. — William Cowper

When South hears his partner open then raise spades, it suggests a minimum hand, typically with four trumps. So South decides that jumping directly to small slam is more likely to attract a favorable lead than result in missing a playable grand slam.

West has a natural diamond lead; declarer wins the ace and takes the trump finesse. When West wins the king and leads another diamond, the slam now depends on not losing a heart trick. South can simply try to guess which opponent has the heart queen, but one should try to postpone a decision of this kind until the last possible moment.

The idea is to play on side suits first in the hope of finding out something about the distribution. Sometimes one cannot discover anything useful, but it should cost nothing to try.

Accordingly, South uses dummy’s trump entry to ruff dummy’s last diamond, then plays three rounds of clubs. He is rewarded when West discards a diamond on the third round of that suit. At this point, declarer knows that East started with precisely six clubs and two spades. Since East has followed three times in diamonds, East could not have started with more than two hearts. If East began with more than three diamonds, he has room in his hand for at most one heart.

Whatever the case, South knows West has more hearts than East. Thus the odds are that West has the heart queen, so he finesses through West in hearts. When the finesse succeeds, the slam comes home.

ANSWER: This is an area of modern bidding that is somewhat undiscussed. There are three plausible calls to consider: You could raise hearts, rebid one no-trump or introduce your spades. I don’t like bidding spades on such a poor suit with only three clubs, and I am not enchanted with raising hearts on such a square hand. So this looks like a one-no-trump rebid to me. I’d risk losing the spades on a part-score deal.