ACES ON BRIDGE

Necessity never made a good bargain.

— Benjamin Franklin

Mandatory falsecards may temporarily mislead partner, but the trade-off of confusing partner as opposed to declarer is one you can accept if the circumstances are right.

In today’s deal, South exploited the vulnerability with an aggressive four-spade opening. He had good spades, no defense and a singleton in the other major, making this a reasonable tactical move.

A minor-suit lead would have given the contract no chance, but West led a top heart, of course. On seeing the dummy and a discouraging card from his partner, West shifted to a diamond. Declarer took dummy’s ace and threw a diamond on the heart queen, setting up a trick in that suit.

Declarer ruffed the next diamond, crossed to the club ace and led a trump off dummy. When East followed low, declarer won his king. He needed to bring spades in for one loser, and if West had instinctively followed with the five, South would have had to play for ace-doubleton on his right by leading a low trump next, making his game.

However, West was aware of the situation and dropped the 10, creating a losing option for declarer where none had previously existed. South now had to decide whether West had jack-10 doubleton or jack-10-low. The Principle of Restricted Choice could not help because West had two equals either way. The only inference he had was that West might not have found this defense if he had three trumps. So South continued with the spade queen and lost his game.

BID WITH THE ACES

ANSWER: This hand has great potential in support of hearts. The ruffing value in spades, top cards in the side suits and secondary trump honors are all positive features, so a simple raise to two hearts, while correct in terms of high-card points, would be inadequate. A jump raise to three hearts is what this hand is worth. Compare this hand to a 4-4-3-2 shape to see the extra potential here.

If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, email him at

bobbywolff@mindspring.com