ACES ON BRIDGE

The Principle of Fast Arrival in game-forcing auctions proposes that instead of exploring carefully, you jump to game (wasting at least a full round of bidding) to make your partner guess what to do when he has extras. This is not my favorite convention.

By contrast, here North’s jump to three no-trump shows about 15-17 with two or three spades. With less, or more, North would bid two no-trump. When South produces a quantitative four no-trump, North reveals his spade support, and West leads the heart two against six spades, to the queen and king. Back comes a trump to the eight; can you identify declarer’s best line now? Instead of relying on the red suits to behave, South cashes the club ace, ruffs a club high in hand, gets to dummy with a trump and discovers they split. (If they didn’t, declarer would instead finesse hearts, then test diamonds, hoping that, if they didn’t break, the same hand was long in both spades and diamonds.)

When spades divide, South ruffs another club high, takes the diamond ace, then re-enters dummy with a diamond to ruff dummy’s last club. He goes back to dummy with the heart ace and draws trumps, discarding his losing heart.

In the two-card ending, dummy has the heart 10 and a diamond, while declarer has the diamond Q-9 in hand.

Even if diamonds cannot be brought in, declarer has the additional chance (as here) that the hand with long diamonds also has the heart jack and is thus squeezed in the red suits.