ACES ON BRIDGE

Opening Lead: Spade king

Two-suited overcalls usually make the opponents’ play easier, but in today’s deal from a London pairs event, West’s Michaels cue bid gave declarer too much information.

Against four hearts, Mike Bell kicked off with a top spade. He continued with the spade ace and another spade after his partner, Sarah Bell, encouraged. While it is usually poor practice to encourage with queenthird when declarer is known to be ruffing the third round, East wanted to dissuade her partner from switching to a club here.

After ruffing the third spade, declarer cashed a top heart. He then played the diamond ace and another diamond, hoping to get a count on the hand. Had West ruffed this, he would have been endplayed either to open the clubs or to concede a ruff-anddiscard, so Mike discarded. He could infer from East’s signal at trick one that declarer held the club ace-queen.

This gave declarer a nasty guess after he had scored dummy’s diamond king. Did West really have 5=1=1=6 shape, in which case declarer would need to finesse in trumps, or had West refused the cheap chance to score his heart queen? Declarer elected to take the heart finesse. When West won and carefully played a fourth spade, South ended up one down in a contract that probably would have succeeded against silent opposition, with declarer simply banging down the top cards in hearts.

Of course, Mike must be given credit for resisting the temptation to ruff in prematurely. Interestingly, in a sense, the second diamond was not a loser.

ANSWER: You would like to compete to three clubs, but you would also bid that with many better hands than this; how would partner know whether to bid on? Some play a three-level call as promising extras, while two no-trump is artificial, showing a limited competitive bid in a minor. If you have this tool available, bid it. If not, pass is the prudent action.

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