ACES ON BRIDGE

Courtesy is fundamental: Sometimes it keeps at bay even snarling people.

— Fausto Cercignani

In today’s tortuous auction, two diamonds was an artificial game force. After you cue-bid the club ace, then rather sportingly showed your heart control (not mandatory with dead minimum high cards and shape for the auction thus far), North drove to the grand slam via Roman Key-card Blackwood.

When West leads the trump five, plan the play and reward your partnership’s optimism.

Clearly, you will need to establish the hearts if you want to succeed. So, after winning the first trick on the table with the trump nine, cash the heart ace and ruff a heart with the king. Both opponents follow — phew! After crossing to dummy with a club, you ruff a heart with the ace. If hearts have broken, you are home free.

But if the hearts are 4-2, you need trumps 3-2, as here.

You next throw dummy’s diamond five on the club ace, then cross to dummy with a diamond to the ace to ruff a third heart, thereby establishing two heart winners on the table. At this point, after ruffing a diamond in dummy with the 10, you draw the outstanding trumps with the queen and jack, and dummy is again high.

On this layout, you make four trumps in dummy, three heart tricks and three heart ruffs, plus the diamond ace and two clubs for a total of 13 tricks.

If hearts had been 3-3, you would have thrown a diamond on the club ace, then drawn the outstanding trumps without needing them to break.

ANSWER: It looks easy enough to bid three diamonds here, but sometimes your partner will have extras with four hearts and five clubs, and you will have gone past your best strain. You can instead offer partner a choice of minors with a two-no-trump bid. Your failure to bid one no-trump at your first turn means that the call now suggests this sort of pattern in the minors.