ACES ON BRIDGE
Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
In today’s deal, East’s one-club opening was brushed aside as South overcalled one spade and North advanced with one no-trump. South had enough to force to game but did not want to insist on playing in spades. He cue-bid two clubs to start a dialogue, and when North showed doubleton support, South bid four spades.
West might have hit on the lead of the heart eight, trying to maneuver a ruff, but he chose a fourth-highest club instead, to the ace and king. East exited with a low club, ruffed by declarer, who crossed to the spade ace and played another spade, to see East’s queen pop up. Declarer pulled the last trump, pitching a club from dummy, and advanced the diamond jack out of his hand. East sensibly ducked that, trying to cut declarer off from the long winner in dummy.
Placing a club honor with West based on the play to trick two, declarer credited East with both red-suit kings and proceeded to play another trump. Dummy discarded a heart, and East, who had already been reduced to one club, now had to shed a heart to retain a club exit.
Declarer continued with the diamond ace and another diamond, won by East’s king, and ruffed the club exit, discarding dummy’s diamond. Then, with East down to heart king-jack-10, all declarer had to do was duck a heart to his right-hand opponent, scoring dummy’s heart queen on the endplay.
East would have done no better by unblocking a middling heart; dummy’s nine would have come into play then.
ANSWER: Give preference to three spades. Even if you play two-over-one forcing notrump, your partner will not expect more than doubleton support for this auction. Your red-suit stoppers are too tenuous to insist on three no-trump, which could be disastrous if partner is, say, 5-5 in the black suits. If your partner has 5-4-2-2 shape or a singleton honor in a 5-4-3-1 pattern, he will surely bid three no-trump now.