ACES ON BRIDGE
“Someone can conquer kingdoms and countries without being a hero; someone else can prove himself a hero by controlling his temper. Someone can display courage by doing the out-of-theordinary, another by doing the ordinary. The question is always: How does he do it?”
— Soren Kierkegaard Stefano Tommasini, of the winning Leslie team, is the hero of our last exhibit from the 2023 Crockfords Cup.
Tommasini found himself in five diamonds after showing a shapely two-suiter. He took the club lead with the ace and played a trump to the king. What appeared to be a straightforward contract had suddenly become less so when West showed out. East presumably had six clubs for her one-no-trump call, leaving West with 11 major-suit cards. It was likely that East would be overruffing hearts. On the other hand, West’s collection of major cards meant he might be ripe for a squeeze.
Tommasini advanced the heart queen next,
West winning and continuing clubs. Declarer ruffed that, ruffed a heart in dummy and led a trump. East climbed in with the ace and returned a spade, but it did not help. Declarer accurately won the king in hand, preserving dummy’s ace as a late entry, and then drew the final trump before ruffing another heart. A second club ruff to hand then executed the squeeze against West, who could not retain two cards in each major.
In order to break up the squeeze, the defenders had to lead spades twice to break declarer’s link to dummy. However, West could not do so without surrendering a third spade trick. Nonetheless, his best bet might have been to shift to a far-sighted low spade when in on the heart ace. Declarer would then have to insert the spade 10 from dummy. He surely should do so, but it is a highly unnatural play to make.
ANSWER: With a ruffing value and two aces, this hand is worth a limit raise in spades. Because of your side-suit singleton, you might choose to bid three spades directly rather than going through a forcing no-trump (assuming you have that tool in your armory). Three trumps and a singleton are the equivalent of four trumps in most non-game-forcing sequences.