ACES ON BRIDGE

On today’s hand from a teams-of-four match, four hearts was the contract in both rooms, reached by identical sequences.

In the first room, West led a top spade, and declarer ruffed the next top spade. South drew trumps, and when that took four rounds, denuding him of trumps, he had to hope that West held the club king — or if East held it, that he would not have a spade left to return. It turned out that today was not South’s lucky day; but maybe he didn’t deserve it.

As to why that was the case, at the second table the defense started along the same lines, but this declarer took his time and weighed up all the possibilities. He could see that there was an inescapable diamond loser, so rather than ruff the spade king, he discarded a diamond from hand. South ruffed the third spade in the knowledge that East had surely started with no more than three cards in that suit

(which was expected after the overcall). Even if hearts broke 4-1 and East held the club king, he would be safe, since East would no longer have a spade to return. And this proved to be the case.

After ruffing the third spade, declarer drew trumps and continued with the club finesse, which lost to East. However, regardless of which minor East returned, South had the 10 tricks for his contract.

This hand consists of an oft-recurring theme — that of playing a loser on a loser — but on this occasion, the theme is better hidden than usual.

ANSWER: Bid four spades. You should be delighted to push on since your partner is marked with short hearts and at least four trumps with which to ruff your losers there. With lots of trumps and complementary shortness, you should make a decent number of tricks. Even if four hearts is going down, four spades should not be too costly. In fact, you might consider bidding on over five hearts at some vulnerabilities.