ACES ON BRIDGE
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— Thomas Jefferson
“The five-level belongs to the opponents” was one of Terence Reese’s mottoes. On today’s deal, South violated that principle successfully, but a more inspired defense would have produced a different result.
West led a heart against five spades doubled. It might have been right for South to lead clubs right away, but declarer won in hand and crossed to dummy’s spade king, finding the bad news. Now declarer had to take the diamond finesse to discard his heart loser, at which point he exited with a club. East allowed West’s 10 to hold the trick, so West played another diamond. This allowed declarer to ruff in dummy, then cross-ruff clubs and hearts. East could eventually overruff the fourth round of diamonds with his trump trick, but that was the defense’s second and last trick.
When East sees South lead a low club from hand, he can more or less count 11 tricks for declarer if this is a singleton, unless he can seize the lead himself in order to switch to a trump. But if he shifts to a low trump, he is simply exchanging one trick for another — the outcome will not be affected. What East must do is switch to the spade queen, sacrificing his honor in battle to win the war. Declarer can win with the ace, but he does not have the entry to set up dummy’s clubs and can only take two ruffs in the dummy. One of those ruffs will be with the spade jack, and that re-promotes East’s trump 10 back into the setting trick.
ANSWER: When you are 6-4 and have the opportunity to make an economical rebid in the four-card suit, you should almost always take advantage of that opportunity. (Exceptions are dead-minimum hands in which the four-card suit is weak.) Here, you have extras and a good four-card suit, so bid two diamonds happily.