ACES ON BRIDGE

Opening Lead: Club eight

In this deal from the Kaplan Blue Ribbon Pairs, Brian Senior, playing with Nigel Bird, extracted the most from his part-score.

North gave his partner suitable leeway for the third-hand opening by simply giving preference to four diamonds. South could hardly bid on over that, and game was nothing to write home about anyway.

In four diamonds, Senior passed the first test by taking the club eight lead with the ace, unblocking his nine. Then he ran the diamond queen, followed by the jack. East covered, and Senior won in hand, drew trumps, and now needed to cross to dummy to take the club finesse. East was favored to hold the spade ace, so Senior advanced the heart king, an important move. West won and was endplayed. If he exited with the heart queen, declarer would ruff and play the spade king (which would be ducked), followed by another spade, compelling East to play a black suit.

So West played a spade, and Senior crossed the last hurdle by putting up dummy’s jack. When East played the ace, Senior dropped the king. Now he could ruff the next heart and go to the spade queen to pass the club seven. Thanks to the unblock at trick one, he could remain in dummy to repeat the club finesse and wrap up 11 tricks.

Had declarer played the spade king (ducked) before exiting with a heart, West could have held declarer to his contract by playing a spade to East. Now on a heart exit, declarer would have to ruff and concede a club.

ANSWER: Despite your club fit, three notrump could easily be the best game here. Bid three diamonds to show a stopper. If partner can bid three no-trump, great. If he punts with three hearts, he probably does not have a heart stopper, so I would bid four clubs, intending it to be non-forcing. If he bids three spades, I might take a chance and jump to five clubs.

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