ACES ON BRIDGE

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

Today’s deal shows a type of problem that is often encountered in real life. It is necessary to plan the play right from the start in order to visualize the ending.

As South, when you take advantage of the vulnerability to open one spade, you hear West overcall in hearts. North drives to game showing short hearts, and you wrap up the bidding in game.

When dummy comes down, you can see that you are certainly high enough. West kicks off with the heart king and shifts to the spade jack. You must now plan how to reach 10 tricks. The obvious line to follow is a crossruff, but be careful! The key is that you must win the trump shift in hand to ensure that your crossruff will not be interrupted by an overruff.

Your plan will be to ruff one heart low and two hearts high in dummy, while crossing back to hand with two club ruffs. Specifically, you win the spade ace and ruff a heart low, then cash the club ace and crossruff the next four tricks.

After taking seven tricks in a row, declarer can cash the diamond ace and exit from hand with a diamond. In theory, either defender can win the diamond, but in today’s three-card ending, declarer will be able to score both his 10 and eight of trumps in hand for his 10 tricks, no matter what the defenders do.

Note that if West had an original 2-6-2-3 shape with the spade nine and diamond king, he would win the trick with his king, but would only be able to lead hearts or a trump, so declarer would still be safe.

ANSWER: Your right-hand opponent presumably has long clubs — do you have any reason to act again? I see no reason to bid now; you have a minimum hand with reasonable defense in clubs. If your partner cannot compete to two spades, you should not assume that it would be a desirable contract.