A VALID ASSUMPTION WITH AN EXPERT

John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in 1989 in The Guardian newspaper in England, claimed, “In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

Look only at the West and North hands. Defending against four hearts, West leads the club queen: nine, ace, eight. East shifts to the spade eight. Should West win with the ace and give him a spade ruff, or should he signal enthusiastically with the nine, playing East for a doubleton spade and a quick trump entry?

This was one of the deals Jeff Rubens set for the 1988 Intercollegiate Championship, in the days before transfer bids were ubiquitous.

The first trick marked South with the club king. (When going third hand high, play the bottom of equal cards.) If declarer has the heart ace as well, the contract is impregnable. So, place the trump ace with East. Then comes the hard part. At the highest level, if East has a singleton spade, verily he should cash the heart ace before leading his spade. (He knows that if South has the spade ace, the contract is unbeatable.) As East didn’t do that, West should assume that East has a doubleton spade. So, West plays an encouraging nine. His trust is verified when East wins the first round of hearts with his ace, leads his second spade to West’s ace and receives a ruff for down one.

Do you have that much confidence in your partner’s ability? If so, lucky you!