ACES ON BRIDGE

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

— William Blake

This deal was played in an online match between De Botton and a Dutch side.

Maarten Schollaardt opened one heart as South, then bid game when his partner showed a good raise.

Jason Hackett kicked off with the spade ace, ruffed by declarer, who finessed the club queen. East won and shifted to his diamond, taken by declarer’s ace. (Readers may entertain themselves by finding how declarer can succeed after East plays a low spade instead.) Next came the club ace, a spade ruffed with the nine, a club ruff, the heart ace-king and another club ruff.

In the four-card ending, South retained a trump and three diamonds, and dummy held the singleton diamond 10 and jack-10low in spades.

So far, declarer had lost only one trick, but it looked like he was bound to lose three more in diamonds. Not so — Schollaardt found a beautiful solution.

He continued with the spade jack, on which he suavely pitched a diamond from hand. East, in with the spade queen, persisted with the spade king, and again declarer discarded a diamond. The spade 10 made the penultimate trick as poor East had to concede an entry to dummy for a game swing to North-South.

In effect, declarer had stripped East of his exit cards and endplayed him in the spade suit. However, because dummy had no more entries, declarer had to discard twice, keeping East on play, to make his game. This is a complicated example of a loser-on-loser play.

ANSWER: Your clubs are worse than your diamonds, but it is really a toss-up as to which suit will play better if your partner is weak.The benefit in rebidding two clubs is that if partner is strong and uses the fourth suit, you can raise diamonds to show your hand precisely. Raising fourth-suit forcing should always be played as natural (four or, in some cases, three cards).