BRIDGE with Tannah Hirsch

Sometimes you can blame bad luck for going down in a contract. Quite often, though, the opportunity to control your own fortune is overlooked.

There are several roads to the diamond slam. The one shown is a simple, direct, natural auction that proved eminently effective. North’s four clubs was a cue-bid indicating first-round control of that suit and mild interest in slam. South needed no further encouragement.

West found the best lead of the king of spades. Declarer won and, since the first order of business was to get rid of dummy’s spade loser, South cashed the jack, king and ace of hearts for a spade discard from the table. Next declarer started on trumps, leading a deceptive jack of diamonds. But West won with the ace perforce, and reverted to hearts, and East ruffed with the nine of trumps for a onetrick set.

Unlucky? Not really. Declarer should have been aware of the possibility of a heart overruff. It was simple enough to counter. After the play to the first four tricks, all South needed to do was to cash dummy’s ace and king of clubs, discarding the queen of hearts from hand, and then go about the business of drawing trumps and ruffing the two spade losers in dummy.

Congratulations to those readers who spotted the rare winner-on-winner play necessary to land the slam!