DAILY BRIDGE CLUB

“I’ve had to agree with my wife so much,” a player at the club told me ruefully, “that now when I hear the sound of her voice, I just instinctively start to nod.”

In a matchpoint duplicate event, my friend opened one heart as today’s South, and his wife, North, raised to two hearts when West overcalled one spade.

“I bid four hearts,” my friend said. “When I saw dummy, I thought my wife might have tried 1NT instead, but she insisted that showing her heart support was mandatory, and I just nodded.”

West took the K-A of spades and led a third spade, and East ruffed dummy’s queen. Declarer overruffed, led a diamond to the king and returned the jack of trumps to finesse. West produced the king and exited with a trump.

“I drew trumps,” South told me, “and took the ace, queen and king of clubs, hoping for a 3-3 break. When West discarded, I tried a diamond finesse with the jack, but West had the queen. My wife said I had booted the contract. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded like I always do.”

Did South do anything terrible?

After South draws trumps, he should cash his last trump, pitching a diamond from dummy. He next takes the three top clubs. With two tricks to go, dummy has a low diamond and a low club, and declarer has the A-J of diamonds.

When dummy leads a diamond at the 12th trick and East follows with the 10, South knows his last card is the jack of clubs, so a diamond finesse can’t win. So South puts up the ace — and makes his game when the queen falls from West.