ACES ON BRIDGE

Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap. When you stub your toe on the foot of the bed, that was a gap in knowledge.And the pain is a lot of information really quick. That’s what pain is.

— Jerry Seinfeld The doctrine of “more haste, less speed” could have been constructed to describe a number of bridge players, whose greatest passion appears to be to hog the hands as declarer, then misplay them as fast as possible!

Today’s exhibit is just one of the problems that a thoughtful declarer would get right, and a hasty declarer would mishandle, then have only himself to blame.

Say you declare six hearts after a scientific but by no means unreasonable sequence. You do not have enough to drive to slam, so you consult your partner via a couple of cue-bids. North, with such excellent controls, takes the plunge.

West leads the club king, and you find a near-perfect dummy with no wasted values in clubs.

How should you play the hand?

A careless declarer will draw trumps, bash out the top spades, curse his luck and concede down one. A thoughtful declarer will realize that when the trumps are evenly split, he will be able to protect himself against any bad spade breaks. He will take two top hearts, cross to the diamond king and ruff a club, play the diamond ace, ruff a diamond, ruff a club, then take the spade king.

Now he leads a low spade from dummy, realizing that this line guards against any spade layout. The point is that once the minors are eliminated, if West has four spades, you let him win the second spade cheaply. Then he will be forced to open up the spade suit to your benefit, or give a ruffand-discard. ANSWER: Regardless of vulnerability or your style, you must not overcall two no-trump (unusual) with this hand. To make such a call with such a weak hand would be asking for trouble. You offer the enemy a Fielder’s Choice: They can either double you for penalty or bid on with a blueprint of the play from your bidding. The odds of a profitable sacrifice are so low that it must be right to pass here.

If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him a

bobbywolff@mindspring.com