ACES ON BRIDGE

“Today we walk by love; To strive is not enough, Save against greed and ignorance and might.”

-- Bliss Carman

At matchpoints or point-a-board teams, scoring every trick counts, and an overtrick can have the same impact as making a grand slam. This will explain the goingson in today’s deal, which comes from the Warren Buffett Cup, the bridge event played between Europe and the USA along the lines of golf’s Ryder Cup.

Against three hearts, Norberto Bocchi led a top club and switched to a diamond to the eight and queen. Declarer, David Berkowitz, continued with ace and another diamond and East, Giorgio Duboin (the hero of the tale), was in. He switched to a spade, covered by the jack, queen and king.

All that was left for declarer was to draw trumps, so he ruffed a club and led a heart toward dummy’s king. Had East won this and played another spade, declarer would have won in dummy and made the no-cost safety play of running the heart nine, a play that Duboin knew would succeed.

Instead, Duboin ducked the heart king! Now declarer continued with the heart nine, covered by Duboin’s 10. South could have guaranteed his contract by playing the queen (losing at most two heart tricks to go with a diamond and a club), but it looked certain to him that West had started with ace-doubleton of trumps, in which case he would make an overtrick if he ducked. So he ducked the heart 10, and now Duboin had to come to two more trump tricks to beat the partscore.

ANSWER: The simplest unambiguous way to show a good spade raise is to cue-bid two hearts -- a call that cannot be misconstrued since you did not overcall in hearts at your first turn. Maybe a call of two diamonds should be artificial as well, but why put partner under unnecessary pressure?