ACES ON BRIDGE

Only a Hungarian can go into a revolving door behind you and come out in front of you.

— Anonymous

This year marks the centenary of the birth of a bridge player who was better known as a prose writer, translator and mathematician. His name was Geza Ottlik, and he classified many hitherto unrecognized positions in bridge. Adventures in Card Play is one of bridge’s more fascinating and complex books.

Here is a deal he created for the Budapest 1977 Junior Camp. He called it “Find the Lad,” in contrast to “Find the Lady.”

Against four hearts, West leads the spade five, and East plays the queen. With inevitable spade and club losers, you would like to hold your trump losers to one. It helps to be a good guesser, but are there are any clues or other pieces of information you need to process?

If you go after trumps on your own, you will surely lose two tricks in the suit today. Instead, you should try to avoid guessing trumps altogether. If the club king is onside, you may not need to open up the trump suit at all.

Return a spade at trick two, win the diamond shift at trick three, then play the second top diamond and ruff a diamond with the heart seven. Next you ruff a spade, as East pitches a diamond, then you advance the club jack and run it if West does not cover. But let’s say he does cover: If so, you ruff yet another spade, cash your remaining club honor and cut loose with your last club. In the three-card ending with just trumps in both hands, the opponents must find the trump jack for you.

ANSWER: You may not have any guarantee that acting is safe, but your shape suggests that it is sensible to balance now with a call of two no-trump. This shows the minors, just as it would if you had bid directly over two hearts. Whenever the opponents have a decent fit, as they appear to have here, your side should have at least an eight-card fit as well, so bidding two no-trump carries very little risk.