BRIDGE 2-21

On a game show that was trying to give away a vacation, the person describing the trip said, “You get 24-hour access to your hotel room.”

How often do you not get all-day access to your room?

Bridge players like to be able to get into one hand or the other at will -- they watch their entries. At first glance, that does not seem important in this deal, but it is.

How should South play in four spades after West leads the diamond queen?

In the auction, South might rebid three no-trump to show a maximum balanced hand. Here, North, with four trumps and a singleton, would retreat to four spades. Three no-trump has no chance, as is usual when several aces are missing.

In four spades, South has four losers: one in each suit. He cannot avoid the aces, so he must do something about the diamond problem -- but what?

Declarer needs to set up his club suit and discard a diamond from the dummy. But South has to watch his entries. He must take the first trick with dummy’s diamond king, then play a club to his king and West’s ace. Declarer wins the next diamond trick with his ace and cashes the club queen to jettison that pesky diamond eight. Finally, South can turn to the trump suit.

Note that if you discard a loser from the long-trump hand, that is the end of the problem. But if you pitch from the short-trump hand, you must also, sooner or later, ruff in the short-trump hand the loser that is still in the long-trump hand -- as in this deal. South takes four spades, one heart, two diamonds, two clubs and a diamond ruff on the board.