ACES ON BRIDGE

“Do I do business with Canadian racketeers? I don’t even know what street Canada is on.”

— Al Capone

Fred Gitelman of Canada is known as one of the most successful marketers of bridge via the internet. He is also a fine player, and in the 2000 Bermuda Bowl he gave an object lesson in the manipulation of the trump suit. Consider the play in four hearts on a spade lead, looking only at the North and South hands.

Gitelman won the spade lead with the ace and avoided the mistake of taking the second top spade at once (which would have exposed him to a potentially lethal force later on). Instead, he played a heart to the king and decided that West’s play of the queen was a true card — how many of us would be up to a false card here? He therefore switched his attention to clubs, and when he led the king from hand, West obliged by taking the ace, which was not best for the defense.

That was all the help Gitelman needed.

He took the spade return with the king, pitching a diamond, then ruffed a spade, cashed the diamond tops and crossed to dummy with a club to ruff another spade.

Now he led another club to dummy, and in the three-card ending, he played dummy’s last diamond. East had heart ace-10-eight left, and Gitelman still had the nineseven in his hand. Whether East ruffed high or low, Gitelman would collect another trump, for his 10th trick.

Had West ducked his club ace and taken the next round of the suit to return a third club, the entries would not have sufficed to allow the trump elopement.

ANSWER: You should double, meaning it as cards, primarily takeout, normally with tolerance for partner’s suit. You would like more values to act with, but the shape is nearly perfect, and the level low enough to be safe. If double gets both majors in while showing diamond tolerance, how bad can it be?