ACES ON BRIDGE

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

— Sun Tzu

In today’s deal, North’s extra shape persuades him to compete to the five level — a fine decision.

West’s heart queen lead is ruffed in dummy, and declarer can see three potential losers in the minors. The clubs are something of a broken reed, but dummy’s diamonds offer great promise. Even simply guessing the king-jack would suffice.

However, if declarer were to cross to hand on a trump and misguess diamonds, he would run out of entries to dummy. He could ruff two diamonds in the hope that the missing honor would fall, but those are unsatisfactory odds.

Declarer should instead try to establish the fifth diamond in dummy, ruffing out the suit against any 4-3 break. This will also succeed if either honor is doubleton. That requires three ruffs and an entry to get back to dummy, so four entries in total. A trump will be one of those entries, which declarer cannot afford to waste by crossing on a trump at trick two. He should forget about leading up to the diamond king-jack and call for a low one from the table instead.

East wins the diamond 10 and returns a trump. Declarer wins that in dummy, ruffs a diamond, ruffs a heart and ruffs another diamond. When everyone follows, declarer plays a trump back to dummy and ruffs the fourth round of diamonds, establishing his required discard.

This line would be easy to find if dummy’s diamonds were jack-fifth rather than king-jack-fifth, so the diamond king is today’s red herring.

ANSWER: It may seem daunting to enter the bidding at the four-level with only 10 points, but your side probably has a big fit. It is only when both four hearts and your own contract are going down that bidding here is wrong, so make a takeout double. While there is some discussion about the best use of a double of four spades, a double of four hearts is universally played as takeout.