ACES ON BRIDGE

Decisiveness is the one word that makes a good manager.

— Lee Iacocca

Plan the defense in today’s deal as East, when your partner leads the heart two against four spades. Your first task should be to consider the missing high cards. Since you have eight points and dummy has 14, your partner has at most five or six points.

Could shifting to diamonds ever be necessary to beat the contract? I cannot see how. The next question is whether a low heart at trick two might ever let the contract through. There are two reasons why that seems unlikely. The first is that if partner had three or four small hearts, he would probably have led a higher spot card. The second is that your partner must not have both the guarded spade queen and a sure diamond trick such as the ace, or declarer would not have had an opening bid at all.

East may deduce from the auction and dummy’s strength that the best hope for the defense is to try for three hearts and a trump trick. If he believes that, he may decide that being able to lead the 13th heart will increase his side’s chances of scoring a trump trick. Once he comes to that conclusion, he should lead a low heart at trick two. When the heart three goes to the queen, East can take the next heart with the ace and play the 13th heart. Now, whether South ruffs high (when West discards) or low (when he ruffs in with the eight), West’s spade king cannot be shut out.

ANSWER: Bidding again is not without risk, but I hate to surrender part-scores without a fight, whether at rubber, teams or pairs. I think you are supposed to bid again, and the issue is whether to bid two diamonds, focusing on the suit quality, or double, hoping partner has real heart length. I can see both sides of this, but the suit quality and West’s negative double would persuade me to bid diamonds.