ACES ON BRIDGE

“There’s small choice in rotten apples.”

— William Shakespeare

In today’s offering, declarer gains a trick by offering his opponents a choice of unpalatable alternatives.

After North sensibly raises to three notrump, West leads the spade jack. Declarer takes the queen and counts only six tricks. One extra trick can be forced in each red suit, and declarer might consider trying to take advantage of the possibility of a doubleton diamond ace in West by playing a diamond to the queen and ducking the next round.

It is superior to duck the first diamond and then lead out the king. That makes the hand by force when the diamond ace is doubleton in either hand, since declarer can run the whole suit. However, better still is to advance the diamond king from hand at trick two. This is still fine if West has ace-doubleton (declarer can duck the second round to keep a link with dummy), but it gains when West holds ace-third. If West takes the first diamond, declarer ducks the second and runs the suit. If West ducks, declarer can lead a second diamond to pocket another trick with dummy’s queen before turning to hearts to force his ninth trick there.

The recommended approach fails when East has ace-doubleton in diamonds, but that is less likely than acethird with West (any specific card has a higher chance of being in the longer holding), and in any case, an unobservant East might take his ace from that holding. Declarer might even be able to get a read on where the ace lies if either defender breaks tempo.

ANSWER: Your partner might have raised already with three-card support, and he may even have a singleton spade. Your spades are nothing to write home about, and the outside high cards should prove useful in no-trump, so I would pass. If one of my side honors were in the spade suit, I might rebid two spades.