ACES ON BRIDGE

When North supports spades, South drives to slam via Roman Key-card Blackwood, which identifies the missing trump queen.

As dummy wins the first trick with the club ace, South notes that with 13 tricks available on normal breaks, his goal must be to guard against a combination of bad breaks.

His first step is to ruff dummy’s low club. Then he discovers the bad news in trump. Next comes the heart queen followed by the top diamonds. East might ruff the second, but would be stuck for a good return. If he plays a club, declarer ruffs in dummy and cashes a top heart to discard his last two losing diamonds. After a trump finesse, declarer can claim the rest. If East instead returns a heart

(his best try), South can discard one of his low diamonds as dummy wins.

The remaining top heart is led, and East must ruff in, but South over-ruffs and draws East’s last trump. There is still a trump in dummy to take care of South’s last low diamond.

To beat the slam, East must not ruff the second diamond; he should discard a heart. He then trumps the next top diamond (discarding would not work, since declarer would ruff the next diamond high). He next leads a club for a ruff-sluff, and can then ruff the next heart winner low. No matter what South does, he will lose one more trick.

If South cashes both top hearts at trick three, discarding a diamond, East waits to ruff a diamond honor, then exits with his low trump!

ANSWER: Your partner has indicated he is willing to compete to the two-level, and this hand could hardly be better, given that you have remained silent so far. Bid three hearts and let partner take it from there — yours not to reason why.

bobbywolff@mindspring.com