DAILY BRIDGE CLUB

“You know,” Cy the Cynic said to me in the club lounge, “I can tell you a few things about the virtues of procrastination.” “Go ahead,” I shrugged. “We’ll discuss it later,” Cy said. Cy’s funeral will probably start 10 minutes late to honor his memory, but at least he knows the value of waiting to draw trumps. When Cy was declarer at today’s five diamonds, he took the ace of hearts and saw that he needed to play the trumps for one loser. If the missing trumps broke 2- 2, fine, but if a defender had the singleton ace, Cy needed to make the first lead through him.

At Trick Two, Cy led a sneaky jack of spades from dummy. His “fake finesse” didn’t work. East’s queen covered, and the Cynic’s king lost to West. But then Cy knew East had the ace of diamonds: West was a passed hand and had shown the K-Q of hearts plus an ace.

So Cy ruffed the spade return, ruffed a heart in dummy and returned a trump. When East’s ace appeared, the contract was safe. Well done, Cy. DAILY QUESTION You hold: partner opens one spade, you respond two diamonds, he rebids two hearts and you try 2NT. Partner then bids three spades. What do you say?

ANSWER: Partner’s auction suggests six spades, four hearts and extra strength. If his values were minimum, he would have rebid two spades. His three spades is forcing. Bid four spades, which should be singleton king is adequate support. West dealer N-S vulnerable