BRIDGE

South, with no reason to expect North to cover two of his three losers, bid 6S. How would you play this when West leads a low heart to East’s ace? You must plan to take a diamond finesse, eliminate the hearts and exit in clubs, hoping to endplay one of the defenders. Since you need entries to dummy, you ruff the first heart with an honour. You cross to the trump nine and ruff another heart high. You draw East’s last trump and cross to the six of trumps. You then run the jack of diamonds. Whether or not East covers, you can eliminate both the red suits. You now have three clubs and one trump in each hand. You lead a low club towards dummy and West plays low. What now? If East had not opened, the best play would be to rise with dummy’s jack, hoping that West held the king and queen. Why is that? Because that line needs only two cards to be well placed. Here it seems that East holds the A-Q of hearts (because West led low at trick 1 and East played the ace). He has the diamond queen, too, but needs something good in clubs to make up an opening bid. So, finesse dummy’s nine of clubs. East wins with one club honour and has to lead away from the other, or give a ruffand-discard. The slam is yours.