ACES ON BRIDGE

“Anybody might have found it, but — His whisper came to me!”

— Rudyard Kipling

The more unreadable the signal that partner receives, the quieter the suit-preference message you should be sending. That is the simple face of suit preference; alas, life is rarely so straightforward. Consider today’s deal.

Defending against three hearts as West, you elect to lead a top spade, since you do not care to guess which minor suit to broach. That works out well enough. Dummy plays low, and partner takes the spade ace as declarer produces the five. Then he follows with the spade king as South contributes the two, followed by the spade four for you to ruff, as declarer plays the seven. What now?

The defense to beat the contract is for you to lead a diamond to partner, who can play a fourth spade and promote your heart jack. But how do you know which minor you should lead? Don’t clubs look just as attractive as diamonds, and didn’t partner play his low spade for you to ruff? No! The spade four was suit preference for diamonds — from time to time, the gods of bridge require you to do your bit: in this case, to remember that the spade three had not made an appearance. However, that was not the big clue. Partner hit you over the head at tricks one and two when he won the spade ace, then king in unnatural order as suit preference for diamonds. Sometimes, one has to improvise suit preference, and a thoughtful partner would foresee the problems in making a small card look big.

ANSWER: Bid three hearts. Doubling is risky with such a disparity in the majors. If you had 4=5=1=3 shape, you would certainly double, but as it is, you might lose a heart fit that is far superior to your spade fit. Still, doubling then raising a response in a major or correcting a fourclub advance to four hearts is not out of the picture here.