ACES ON BRIDGE
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default. — J.K. Rowling When I saw a close variant of this deal from the Common Game in 2017, I thought it had the makings of a good problem. At the table, most North-South pairs played five clubs on a deal where slam seemed highly likely to make. But with neither spades nor clubs behaving, the limit on the hand turned out to be 11 tricks. However, imagine that North finds a slightly off-center raise to two spades rather than a negative double. This is sensible enough, since a decent hand with Q-10 of spades plus short hearts virtually corresponds to a three-card raise. Can you imagine how the defense would go against four spades? West leads from his heart sequence. Declarer wins and crosses to the diamond king to run the spade queen to West, who forces declarer with a second heart. Now declarer must be careful not to draw any more trumps. Instead, he plays a club to the ace and a second club. East will probably discard, and declarer will clear the clubs. He can now ruff the next heart in dummy and come to hand in diamonds to draw trumps, then claim the rest. Note that had declarer drawn trumps before playing on clubs, the combination of bad breaks in the minors would sink him, since he runs out of trumps. Still, I wonder if the defenders might have prevailed by following a more devious line. If West can duck the first trump smoothly, declarer will probably repeat the spade finesse. Now the force in hearts will work, since dummy is out of trumps. ANSWER: It may be a little bit of a push, but you are just about worth a jump to three diamonds. You have high offense, and it is easy to imagine coming to nine tricks in no-trump or 11 in a minor if partner has any extras in shape or high cards. Make the diamond king the queen, and two diamonds would certainly be enough. If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at