WHICH OPPONENT HAS THE MONARCH?

When the auction is competitive, and your partnership has a good trump fit but insufficient high-card values for game, you should usually apply the Law of Total Tricks. You should bid as high as your combined number of trumps. So, with nine trumps between you, take the bidding at least to the three-level.

North chose to limit his hand immediately, not respond one heart. East’s double was responsive. It showed the values to act, but with no clear-cut bid available; typically, no four-card major. South, knowing his partner wouldn’t bid two diamonds with fewer than four trumps, raised to three diamonds despite holding a minimum opening. This ended the auction, and then the declarer, Danish international Knut Blakset, justified his bidding with excellent card-reading.

East won the club lead with his king and returned a trump. Would you have finessed or gone up with the ace?

The percentage play was to finesse, but Blakset stopped to work out the distribution of the missing honors. East was marked with the club ace-king and a high heart honor. (If West held the heart ace-king, he would have led one.) West had to have the other honors to justify his takeout double. So, declarer put up his diamond ace, and West grudgingly dropped the king. Blakset claimed, conceding one spade, two hearts and one club.

East could have made life much harder for South if he had won the first trick with the club ace rather than the king. True, it would have misled West, but that couldn’t have mattered here.