ACES ON BRIDGE

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”

— Bertrand Russell

Had West started by opening one club rather than a Precision diamond, his opponents probably would have been unable to locate clubs.

As it was, South could bid a natural and forcing two clubs over North’s one-spade overcall. When he caught a raise, he gambled on five clubs, since his clubs seemed too slow to set up in three notrump. Declarer won West’s lead of the heart queen in hand and saw drawing trumps could wait; he instead had to work on shedding his second diamond loser on a spade. He cashed the spade king and ruffed a heart to dummy. The spade ace and a spade ruff followed.

If declarer had crossed to the club ace before ruffing both hearts, he would have risked conceding an unwelcome overruff on the fourth spade. West would then have been able to draw dummy’s last trump, leaving declarer an entry (and thus a trick) short. Instead, South ruffed the heart king back to table, and when he took his second spade ruff, it did not matter which defender had the long spades. It was East who had the 13th spade, so West was in a position to overruff on the fourth round of clubs and attack diamonds, but declarer remained in control. South was able to reach dummy with the club ace and pitch his last diamond on the spade nine, losing just two trump tricks in total.

ANSWER: Rebid two clubs. The singleton spade king is no longer such a negative feature, but a no-trump rebid seems wrong, and your clubs are too poor to rebid at the three-level. Some players might open or rebid one no-trump here, but the danger of getting too high in spades or not high enough in no-trump is obvious. If you had the club king instead of the spade king, you might jump to three spades.