ACES ON BRIDGE

Wandering into the bidding over a strong one-no-trump opener and not buying the contract can prove to be an expensive exuberance. Today, West’s reasonable decision to show the majors painted a picture for declarer.

Against three no-trump, West led the spade four, and South saw he could count on eight tricks — four in spades, one in hearts, two in diamonds and one in clubs.

Declarer noticed that the likeliest source of the ninth trick lay in hearts, but he also knew that, in view of the bidding, West was almost certain to have the king. Thus, simply leading a low heart to the queen was unlikely to pay dividends.

So at trick two, when dummy’s spade queen held, he played a low heart, hoping that East might hold at least one of the four top cards in the suit. When East followed with the six, South inserted the seven and West won with the nine. (Had

East played the 10, South would have covered with the queen.)

Now West guessed well to get off lead with a diamond. Taking East’s nine with the ace, South continued with the heart queen. West played the king, which was allowed to hold, the 10 dropping from East.

West exited passively in spades, and South won and drove out the spade king. When West took his king and returned a spade, South took his spade winners and successfully finessed the heart eight. He cashed the heart ace and led a club to the queen and ace to bring home nine tricks.

ANSWER: Although your heart honors are well placed, you can see that you have no real fit for partner’s suits, so no source of tricks. It looks logical here to bid two no-trump, the value of your hand, rather than jump to the no-trump game. If partner passes, I’d expect you to struggle to come to even eight tricks.