ACES ON BRIDGE

This board came up on the first day of the Baze Senior Knockout Teams in Providence, R.I., last fall. Neither table got it right, but I thought it a fine example of playing for your best chance. Beware! The early planning will be critical.You play in four spades as South on the lead of the club king. You can see that finding a doubleton heart ace will suffice. Can you do better?

The best line bears the cryptic name of partial elimination. After ducking the first club and winning the second, you draw only two rounds of trumps, and must be careful to use one high trump from each hand. Assuming trumps split, you then ruff out the diamonds and exit with a club.

If West is left on lead in clubs with no trump to play, the best he can do is lead the heart 10. But declarer puts up dummy’s king and has a finesse against East’s jack on the second round of the suit. Equally, if East ruffs his partner’s winner, he can give a ruff-and-discard or lead hearts. Either way, the defenders can take only one heart trick.

The play is called partial elimination because one trump is left out. Critically, you must use a high trump from each hand to draw trumps, since if you use both high trumps from dummy, West can exit with a fourth club and East can overruff dummy, preventing the ruff-and-discard.

Note that if the cards do not cooperate, you can always fall back on the hope that East holds the doubleton heart ace.

ANSWER: As a general rule, when worth a simple raise of partner’s hearts, make the direct raise rather than introduce a spade suit, however strong it is. The logic is that delayed support or simple preference suggests only two trumps. If you plan to jump-raise partner, by all means bid spades first — especially if it will help partner evaluate his hand. That is not the case today, though.