ACES ON BRIDGE
The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
— Abraham Lincoln
The following deal was analyzed by Ricardo Maria Argerich in The Bridge World and involves a sort of practice finesse.
South did well to mark time with a forcing two-no-trump call, allowing North to show slam interest and a source of tricks with his jump to four clubs. When North continued with five clubs, denoting the two club tops, South drove to slam.
West leads the club nine, top of a doubleton, against South’s six spades.
After drawing trumps, declarer should decide whether he believes West to have led from shortage without the queen. There are some shady types out there who wouldn’t hesitate to try to fool you. If you do believe him
— and I would — take the heart finesse (which superficially appears to have no upside in that you could ruff your heart loser in dummy). However, when it holds, now you run the rest of your spades.
East has to keep all three clubs to prevent you from ducking one. Thus, he can hold only three red cards. Declarer can now execute what is sometimes referred to as a “striptease coup,” or an imaginary squeeze, so named by Stephen Kennedy in his recent book, “Crocs on Squeeze Play.”
Your next move would be to cash your red-suit winners in the suit East has discarded, forcing him to pitch his other redsuit card. That then lets you cash the rest of your red winners and reduce him down to all clubs in the three-card ending. Then you can endplay him by running the club eight around to him.
ANSWER: With a choice of three sensible actions, I prefer an overcall of one spade over doubling or bidding one no-trump. Double followed by a spade call shows a better hand, while one no-trump describes the value of the hand but may lose spades. So bid the spades first and act again later. Your diamond holding and aces and kings argue in favor of suit play.
If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at bobbywolff@mindspring.com