THE ACES ON BRIDGE

“Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;

Nothing’s so hard, but search will find it out.” -- Robert Herrick .....................

Today’s declarer went down in his slam after missing a tiny point in the play. Can you do better?

In the auction, after South had made a strong jump response in spades and rebid his suit, North did well to cue-bid four clubs in support of spades. (With a club suit, North would have rebid three no-trump.) Now, after an exchange of cue-bids, South used Blackwood and drove to the small slam when he found the trump king was missing.

West led the club king against the slam, and declarer won the trick; what now? It all looked too easy: South crossed to a top diamond and discarded his losing clubs on the heart ace and king. Then he turned his attention to the trumps, but now he ran into a problem. Should he finesse or put up the ace and continue the suit? As you can see, when West showed out, it did not matter! To avoid two trump losers, he had to reach dummy again, and East was unkind enough to ruff when the diamonds proved to be 4-1. Now there was no way to prevent East from scoring a second trump trick.

A change in timing would have made the difference. Try cashing the spade ace before rushing to take discards. The trump position is exposed, so now after crossing to a diamond and throwing the losing clubs away, only one trump lead from dummy is needed to hold the losers in the suit to one.