ACES ON BRIDGE

“AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.” — Ambrose Bierce

When North doubled one club, South jumped to two spades and then aggressively competed to three spades over three clubs. Double would have collected 300 on best defense.

West laid down the club king then shifted to the heart three. Declarer won in hand and led a spade to the jack, queen and king. Back came a second heart, won in dummy. Declarer then called for the spade five and ran it successfully. He then repeated the spade finesse to draw trumps, West pitching a heart and two clubs.

Now South knew West was marked with the rest of the clubs, but an endplay would only develop if he could eliminate West's exit cards in diamonds. Declarer could take just one ruff and had no obvious way to endplay West in the diamond suit itself.

Nonetheless, South crossed to the diamond ace, ruffed a diamond and then went back to the heart ace to lead a third diamond. Remarkably, if East played low, West would have to win and lead around to declarer's club queen. If East hopped up with the diamond king, he would have to cede the final trick to dummy's diamond 10.

Both sides had erred earlier in the play, though. East could have disrupted declarer's entries by covering the spade five on the second round. Meanwhile, declarer could have made it home by way of a dummy reversal, cashing the spade ace and using heart entries to ruff three diamonds in hand.

He could then exit passively and eventually force East to give dummy a trick with the spade queen.

ANSWER: Open three clubs. Your chances of making a game are low, facing a passed hand. The emphasis is on impeding the opponents instead. Of course, sometimes this drives the opponents to a contract they would not have reached otherwise; them's the breaks.