ACES ON BRIDGE

We have established that in mid-auction you tend to bid no-trump if you have the opponent’s suit under control, but you can ask partner for help by cue-bidding that suit. But what if the opponents have bid or shown two suits? Does a call ask or state?

The general rule is that when there are two danger suits, you bid where you live. So on the auction shown today, South’s three-heart call shows a heart stop and, by inference, he can’t have too much in spades or he would have bid no-trump himself.

North’s three-spade call suggests a half-stopper in spades or three small cards, since (once again) he would bid no-trump if he could, and would eschew no-trump with short spades.

When South bites the bullet and bids three notrump, West leads out the top spades, suggesting to South that spades are 4-4; but whether they are breaking or not, South must find his best chance to bring in clubs for five tricks. If he loses a trick to the club queen, he will surely go down, since West has an entry to the spades in the heart ace.

With West having nine cards in the majors, it is correct to play East for the club queen. To do that, declarer crosses to the diamond king in dummy and runs the club jack.

This play picks up the 4-1 club breaks where East has the queen (of which there are four) while losing to the singleton club queen in West, a far less likely case. ANSWER: If this were non-forcing, you would pass; but how can it be? Your partner would have raised two clubs to three clubs if that were so (since he isn’t looking to play four spades, apparently). If you have to bid now, showing your values in diamonds with a call of three diamonds is a fairly accurate description of your hand.

I don’t demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don’t know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus paper. — Stephen Hawking