ACES ON BRIDGE

He has gained every point who has mixed practicality with pleasure, by delighting the reader at the same time as instructing him. — Horace

At a Fort Worth sectional, one of my readers, Dick McLamore, was South. When he produced a strong jump shift to North’s one-heart opener(!), he heard North jump to five clubs, suggesting good clubs. So he took a shot at the grand slam once he found a spade control opposite.

When West doubled, North masochistically passed, but McLamore decided that the double had to be based on a club void, the so-called Lightner double. This asks the hand on lead either to attack dummy’s first-bid suit, or to give his partner a ruff. Accordingly, he escaped to seven no-trump.

This was logical reasoning, but wrong in every respect. Admittedly, the complete deal would have come as a complete surprise to just about everybody except North, who had had a bidding box accident on her first turn.

In seven no-trump, McLamore captured the spade king lead with the ace. If diamonds were 3-3, he could see there would be 13 tricks for the taking, but West showed out on the third round. Can you see how to advance the play?

Declarer simply ran the clubs, throwing a spade from hand on the fifth. He already knew from the bidding and play thus far that West had the spade queen and the hearts guarded, but even if East had held four hearts as well as West, the last club would have successfully squeezed both players.

In that scenario, only a heart lead would have broken up the squeeze, and anyone who found that would have my admiration.

ANSWER: My guess would be to lead my second-highest club, because with such a bad suit, I want my partner to be open to the idea that he might need to shift to a second suit in order to beat the opponents. If I had two sure entries on the side, I might lead fourth-highest here.