ACES ON BRIDGE

“A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.”

— Mitch Hedberg

After West’s weak jump overcall, North’s cue-bid of three spades promised a game-going hand with at least three hearts. Despite South’s discouraging signoff in game, North continued rather optimistically to what proved to be the delicate slam.

West led the spade king to dummy’s ace, and declarer paused to form a plan. Declarer saw that even if trumps were 3-2, he would only have 11 top tricks. He rejected the idea of ruffing a spade low in dummy as hopeless, and saw that a squeeze on West between spades and a minor suit was impractical because of his need to find trumps breaking.With known spade length to his left, declarer realized that pressure on East was possible but the key would come from scoring all his small trumps in hand. So he continued by cashing the two top hearts in his hand, followed by the club ace-king. After ruffing a club, declarer returned to dummy with the diamond queen to ruff the fourth round of clubs. Declarer next cashed the diamond ace-king, then led the fourth diamond from table. When East followed suit, declarer ruffed with his last trump.

At this point, declarer had taken one spade, two trumps, three ruffs and the five minor-suit winners, with the master trump still in dummy.This line needed West to have either one or two trumps and East to have at least four cards in each minor. If that was not so, East could ruff a minor-suit card and leave declarer with a spade loser.

ANSWER: I would take the slow route with a two-heart cuebid. A jump to the no-trump game would be premature; we could easily belong in spades or even a minor suit. This cue-bid does not guarantee spade support, and I plan to suggest no-trump later, to show a flexible hand with doubts as to the best strain. You would not bid this way with only a singleton spade, so partner can always convert to four spades.