ACES ON BRIDGE

“Opportunity has hair on her forehead but is bald behind. If you meet her, seize her, for once let slip, Jove himself cannot catch her again.”

— Phaedrus

As South today, you are faced with another challenge to make the most of a poor dummy. Partner’s raise after the double shows a weak hand, but it actually turns out to be decent — in context.

In four spades, you can see you will need to take a winning finesse in either spades or diamonds, but you do not have the luxury of trying each in turn. The only way to cultivate an entry to dummy is to give up one of those finesses.

In isolation, the best approach is surely to lay down the spade ace and another spade. You will make the hand if the spade king falls singleton, or the diamond king is onside. The diamond king is less likely to drop, given you have fewer cards in that suit.

In the context of the hand however, you know West has short spades after his takeout double. East is therefore more likely to hold the spade king, while West rates to hold the diamond king, having shown length in the side suits. Thus, you should abandon the diamond finesse, winning the heart lead and playing diamonds from hand to force an entry to table.

Be careful to lead a low diamond rather than cashing the ace first. The diamond king cannot possibly be singleton based on the bidding, and cashing the ace would allow East to score a third-round ruff if he has a doubleton.

West takes his king and continues hearts. You ruff the third, cross to dummy in diamonds, then lead the spade queen and continue with the spade 10. You finesse again, to pick up trumps for no losers.

ANSWER: You could underbid with an invitational three spades, force to game with three no-trump (showing six good spades), invent a force to game with a three-diamond call, or raise to two notrump to denote a balanced 18-19. With no singletons and good stoppers, I would go for the last of these. A spade filler and an outside trick is probably all we need for nine tricks in no-trump.