ACES ON BRIDGE

“A sight to make an old man young.” - Lord Tennyson

Before you touch a card here in the contract of three no-trump, on a top spade lead, focus just on the North and South cards, and ask yourself just how good are your chances of making the contract.

A simple answer would be that if you reasonably assume the opponents’ spades to be 6-3, they are threatening to set up then cash out that suit.

To come to nine tricks, you could play on diamonds -- a 50 percent chance -- or you could play on clubs, which seems to work when that suit breaks or if the diamond finesse succeeds.

Many players would win the spade lead and play to the club queen, then advance the club jack from dummy. West wins the trick and clears spades, leaving you the diamond finesse as your last chance. Bzzt! Bad luck, but we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

You can improve dramatically on that last line after the club queen holds. Come back to hand with a heart and play another club up toward the jack. It will do West no good to fly up with the ace and lose his second club stopper, so he ducks, and now you have discovered the bad club break without losing the lead. There is no need for heroics; simply play the diamond ace and another diamond, losing a trick to the king, but scoring three diamond tricks and two winners in each of the other suits.

ANSWER: If facing a 15-17 no-trump, I think it is clear that one should pass at any form of scoring except teams, when vulnerable. The odds do not rate to be better than 50 percent, so you surely don’t want to propel yourself too high while helping the opponents on lead. If vulnerable at teams, I could imagine bidding Stayman, but only if the red suits were switched.