ACES ON BRIDGE

For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him

— Eugene V. Debs As South, your frisky three-diamond preempt fetches a wildly optimistic raise from North. However, West’s lead of the club ace establishes dummy’s king; can you exploit his generosity?

If either major-suit finesse is working, you will be fine. You can also succeed on normal play if hearts split 3-3, providing a second spade discard from hand. However, if you draw trumps and lead a heart to the queen and king, then a spade might come back, and force you to a premature guess.

It is better to play the first heart through East, taking an indirect finesse. East cannot afford to rise with the heart king, and at least if the jack loses, West will not be able to restrict your options with a spade shift. You will thus have time to test hearts and play them off before deciding whether you need the spade finesse.You can improve this line even further by cashing the heart ace first. This will endplay West if he was dealt king-doubleton in hearts, the club queen and the spade king.

So, you ruff the club lead, draw trumps, play the heart ace and lead another heart. Today, East cannot afford to rise with the heart king without setting up the suit, but ducking allows you to score the heart jack, cross back to a trump and throw your last heart on the club king. East falls victim to a Morton’s Fork coup.

Note that if you had taken a simple heart finesse, East would have had to shift to a spade to break up the entries for a blacksuit squeeze against West.

ANSWER: This hand has too much potential to sign off in three diamonds. What you would like to do is invite game or show a game-force with diamonds and short clubs below three no-trump. Unfortunately, most systems cannot achieve this. Three notrump would be a shot in the dark, and five diamonds is a fair way off, so I suppose that leaves the underbid of signing off in three diamonds (with whatever method you use).