ACES ON BRIDGE

No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

— John Locke South picks up a monster but correctly opens one spade. The bidding will not die there, and opening with a suit makes it easy to describe the hand later by jumping in clubs. However, when South hears his right-hand opponent bid diamonds, he decides to show his two-suiter with a cue bid. Were he to jump to four clubs directly, North would have a nasty problem as the cards lie. While there is something to be said for simply bidding four spades, it may be wise to involve partner in case there is further competition. Eventually, the partnership settles in four spades.

West kicks off with a top diamond, ruffed by declarer, who goes after his side suit. East captures dummy’s club queen with the ace and should continue the diamond force. West’s club two denotes an odd number, and this can hardly be from five clubs or South’s bidding would make no sense. Thus, a trump return would only hand control over to declarer.

After ruffing the second diamond, declarer cashes the club king and ruffs a club to establish his suit. Now the spotlight turns back to East. If he were to overruff with his otherwise worthless trumps, declarer would be able to ruff the return, draw trumps and claim the rest. East must instead discard. Then declarer must ruff a red suit back to hand, in so doing giving East trump control, as he ends up with more trumps than South.

Kudos to you if you found this defense. The urge to score a trick with your trumps here is almost overpowering.

ANSWER: Respond one no-trump as an attempt to improve the part-score. While you could still have a high-level contract on if partner has a big hand with length in one of the red suits, your objective here is as much to keep the opponents out, or to find a safer strain. Even if your left-hand opponent were a passed hand, you might still decide to act here.