ACES ON BRIDGE

When West leads a low trump against six spades, what should your plan be, as East follows suit? Rather than focusing on the deficiencies of dummy when it comes to high cards, you should concentrate on the deal and realize that you have an inevitable diamond loser but can ruff two of your diamonds in dummy. You can make your slam by relying on either the club or heart finesse (each one in principle being a 50 percent chance). If you can, you should look for a way to combine those two chances. Your secondary chance here is to ruff out the heart king in three rounds; you will combine this with the club finesse. So you win the trump lead, cash the heart ace and ruff a heart high. You then cross to the spade jack (drawing the last trump) and ruff another heart. Next you give up a diamond, preparing for two diamond ruffs in the dummy. If the heart king fell from either defender, you will discard the club queen on the established heart winner after taking a diamond ruff. Otherwise, you will finesse the club queen, taking your second chance. Just for the record, your additional chance improves your original 50 percent odds to 60 percent — not to be sneezed at. This deal comes from a bridge book for beginners, “Planning the Play of a Bridge Hand” by Barbara Seagram and David Bird. This is one of the tougher problems. Answer: The simple route here is to double — which is a balanced penalty-oriented action. Your partner will almost never remove the double. But if you want to find a major-suit fit and do not want to risk defending when dummy puts down long running clubs, then cue-bid two clubs. This is takeout suggesting the majors, implicitly limited by your failure to double, and would be my choice.