Aces On Bridge

“Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow.” -- T.S. Eliot

When this deal came up a year or so ago in the later stages of a national knockout championship, I was surprised that neither declarer came a great deal closer to making his delicate game contract.

Both Wests led the spade king against four hearts and shifted to the club jack, at least reducing the total number of possible losers declarer had by one. Both declarers pulled out cards without any particular direction in mind, and eventually finished up by leading a diamond toward the king, thus going down one for a flat board. Running the diamond jack would not have worked any better, since East would have covered, of course.

Success requires nothing more than finding trumps not 3-0, with the clubs dividing no worse than 62 and the club 10 where you would expect it to be -- in the West hand. The winning line is to cash the heart ace at trick three, then your remaining high club, before you cross to dummy with the heart king, drawing the last trump in the process.

Now you lead the club nine from dummy and throw your last spade away, endplaying West into winning and either leading a diamond, when you lose just to the ace, or playing a club. In that case, you pitch a diamond from dummy and play to ruff two diamonds in the North hand.

ANSWER: With no spade stopper, you cannot bid no-trump. Partner has asked you for a stopper rather than announcing that he has one himself. Therefore, you must support clubs instead. Be aware that although you have only two trumps, this holding is more than sufficient, given how strong your doubleton is. It provides far better support than three small trumps.