ACES ON BRIDGE

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap rhythms for bears to dance to.” — Gustave Flaubert

Goldilocks has now completed her bridge training and has advanced to competing at duplicate. Papa Bear expansively invited her to partner with him, “so she could see how the experts play.” Keeping her doubts under firm check, Goldilocks accepted with as much grace as she could and was privileged to watch him get his paws on the dummy, often with singular lack of success. In four hearts, he won the opening club lead in dummy, led a club to the ace, and tried to ruff a club in dummy. East overruffed and led a spade to his partner. A fourth club sank the contract without a trace when East overruffed.

Mama Bear improved on that line at her table. She won the club lead in dummy to lead a club to her hand, then ducked a spade to cut the defenders’ communications for immediate ruffs. Now, when a third club came through, she ruffed in dummy and was overruffed, but she was still in decent shape. She would have survived had trumps broken, or had East held a singleton. But not today.

Baby Bear showed how it should be done. The club queen went to the king, and he next led to the club ace. Now came a third club, throwing a diamond from dummy. When West led a fourth club, declarer threw a second diamond instead of ruffing.

West shifted to a diamond, and declarer won in hand, drew two rounds of trumps, then ruffed his diamond loser in dummy for his 10th trick.

ANSWER: You have a stark choice here. Pass the two-no-trump opening bid or transfer into spades, after which you can pass, or offer a choice of games with a call of three no-trump. I prefer to start with a transfer, but I would plan to pass the completion of the transfer. This doesn’t have to be right; however, since partner can always break the transfer with a super fit, I’ll settle for part-score if he doesn’t.