ACES ON BRIDGE

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

— Thomas Mann After some aggressive bidding from almost everybody at the table, West led a top spade against five clubs and shifted to a heart. When East won and returned the suit, South saw that it would be suicidal to try for a heart ruff in dummy, since West was all but certain to ruff in ahead of dummy. So declarer banged down the club ace-king and breathed a sigh of relief when the suit split.

Since his heart seven was surely going to be a menace against East, declarer could see that both opponents were going to be squeezed dry on the run of the trumps. West was in sole possession of the spade guard, so who would be able to hold onto the diamond guard?

On the last club, everyone came down to three cards.

West had to keep the spade ace and reduced himself to two diamonds.

When dummy let go of the spade queen from the board, East came under the gun. He had to allow declarer his game-going trick by unguarding one of the red suits.

Hard as it may seem, West could have attacked the entry to the double menace by shifting to diamonds at trick two, or East could have broken up the timing for the squeeze by ducking the first heart.

I suppose East might have figured out that even if South had four hearts, the heart losers were going nowhere. And if declarer held the diamond ace-queen, they would have to be doubleton. So, ducking the first heart is probably right, hard as that might seem.

BID WITH THE ACES

South holds:

; 10

k 762

l A 3

' A K 10 9 7 6 3

South West North East

1 l 1 ; 3 l

?

ANSWER: It is risky, but three no-trump is where the money is. I hope to run the club suit, scoring nine quick tricks with partner’s hoped-for major-suit ace. If my major suit holdings were swapped, I would of course raise partner’s suit. And will I sit for it if doubled? I’m glad I don’t have enough space to answer that.