Winners are worth more than points

Textbooks for beginners give the usual number of high-card points needed to make a game or slam. But as they soon learn, these are only guidelines. In particular, when you have a long solid suit, you will not need nearly so many points.

Take a look at today’s deal. What can South make? How should the auction continue from the given start? (Yes, West would have made life harder if he had bid four hearts.) North has a much better hand than he might. He can tell partner with a four-heart controlbid. Then South should controlbid four spades. North might just jump to six clubs, or he could use Roman Key Card Blackwood first.

In six clubs, declarer wins with dummy’s heart ace, draws trumps and plays a diamond to the jack. When that wins, he needs to judge his opponent. Would East hold up the king? Not many players would, especially in a slam. But the safe play is to ruff the heart three in hand and lead a low spade toward the queen. Then South gets home as long as West has one of the pointed-suit kings.

However, if declarer is confident that East does not have the diamond king, he should play a spade to his ace and cash all of his trumps. As the last one is played, everyone has four cards. South has two spades, one diamond and one club. West holds the spade king and three diamonds. Dummy retains the spade queen and acequeen-nine of diamonds.

On the last trump, West must discard a diamond. So dummy releases the spade queen and takes the last three tricks in diamonds via a second finesse. It is a textbook simple squeeze.