ACES ON BRIDGE

Modern bidding has advanced tremendously from the early days in the area of cue-bidding. When I was growing up, cue-bids were reserved for aces; gradually one learned to cue-bid kings and secondary shortness. But it was the Italians who managed to formalize cue-bidding to a point where bypassing a suit almost denies a control of any sort in that suit.

Today’s deal shows both the upside and downside of that approach. After North-South set spades as trump, with North raising to three spades to suggest some extras, South cue-bid his club ace. North now showed a heart control, bypassing the diamonds; South knew there was no diamond control, so he closed up shop in four spades.

Of course, West was listening to the auction, too: he led a low diamond, and suddenly four spades was in jeopardy. Can you see how the defenders should prevail?

When declarer played low from dummy, East put in the jack, led a low diamond to his partner’s king, won the third diamond with his ace and led the 13th diamond. Whatever declarer does now — and presumably ruffing low is correct — West will score his spade queen sooner or later. If East cashes his diamond ace at trick two, the trump promotion is unobtainable.

Does this mean North-South did something wrong? I don’t think so, since if you bid every hand correctly and pay off to the opponents leading accurately, you will do better overall than if you hit and hope on every deal.

ANSWER: This does not look like the sort of hand where you want to bid clubs at the three-level and have to ruff hearts in dummy with high trumps. Instead, settle for the relative security of spades. Bid two spades, which implicitly suggests a doubleton or a dead minimum hand with three spades. Otherwise, you would have supported spades already.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

— Henry Brooks Adams