ACES ON BRIDGE

“Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.” — Ambrose Bierce

At the world championships in Lille, the U.S. team lost a very close knockout match to the eventual winners, Sweden. The Americans had a respectable lead until this deal.

In one room, Bob Hamman played five spades as West, and went down when he quite reasonably misguessed trumps, to end up minus-200. In the other room, Jeff Meckstroth as North had to decide whether to run from four no-trump doubled to five diamonds. Had he done so, he would have lost 300 — no triumph, but better than the calamity that actually occurred.

Per- Ola Cullin as West found the killing low heart lead to his partner’s ace. The spade six came back, to the jack and king, and now Cullin cashed the heart king before going into a long huddle. He could cash the spade king, to assure defeat of the contract — or he could try for more, risking a disaster for his side.

Cullin had to decide whether to gamble on his partner, Peter Bertheau, holding the heart queen and another spade. If he was missing the heart queen, declarer was surely going to take 10 tricks. If Bertheau had started with the heart queen and only one spade, the contract would be down fewer than it should.

After long thought, Cullin eventually got it right and played a low heart to his partner’s queen. Another spade through declarer meant an end result of seven down, for the unusual result of plus 1700, and a lead in the match that Sweden would never surrender.

ANSWER: Your auction is now game forcing, so you do not need to jump to four spades. Make a simple raise of spades, planning to cue-bid at your next turn if partner shows slam interest. It would be nice to be able to cue-bid directly, but a jump to four diamonds would sound like short diamonds in a spade raise.