ACES ON BRIDGE
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
As South in four spades, you receive the diamond two lead to the 10 and queen. Your spade king holds, fetching East’s 10. Play on.
You must bring in clubs with no more than one loser. It is best to run the eight, hoping for West to hold both the club 10 and an honor. (This is twice as likely as the king-queen.) However, trumps might easily be 4-1. If you were to draw trumps before working on clubs, West could win the third round, leaving dummy devoid of trumps, and continue diamonds. You would be forced to ruff the third diamond, but then you would have only one trump left to draw West’s. You would need both the club king and club queen to be in the West hand — as mentioned, not your best chance in the suit. You must play on clubs before trumps to dislodge East’s entry to his diamonds. You might be able to afford a top trump from hand, but the simplest line now is to work on clubs immediately. You know East has six diamonds, so you are, in effect, knocking out the entry to the danger hand first.
Run the club eight to East’s queen, and that player’s best option is to play two more diamonds. Ruff the diamond in dummy and then lead the spade jack, which is ducked. You can then cross to the heart ace and knock out West’s spade ace. Your heart queen will let you draw trumps and claim the rest.
A sneaky West player might try the club king on the first round to simulate holding the king and queen. Ignore him and play for honor-10-low just as you were always going to. ANSWER: The old doctrine is that one should not preempt with a side fourcard major. While this applies more to minor-suit openings than major-suit preempts, I would still open two diamonds here. This hand is about diamonds with the great disparity in suit quality, and the weak two might prevent the opponents from finding a spade fit. As Lord Nelson would have said: “I see no four-card major.”