Bridge

Consider the play in four spades here, after an uninformative auction.

West starts by leading the heart jack to East’s ace, and a heart comes back. You win the trick in hand and presumably plan to draw as many rounds of trumps as is appropriate, ending in hand. With three minor-suit losers looming if the cards are unfavorably located, can you see how to turn a good contract into an excellent one?

The answer is to lead the first trump to dummy’s jack, ruff dummy’s heart, then draw the second trump with the king. Now lead a club to dummy’s eight rather than the jack.

Why? Well the answer is that when East takes the trick, he is absolutely guaranteed to be endplayed. He can only give you a ruff-sluff (in which case you ruff in hand and pitch a diamond from dummy) or lead back a club or a diamond into dummy’s tenaces. Whichever minor he plays, you have the communications to be able to ensure that you lose only one more diamond trick and thus make your contract.

By contrast, if you had led a club to the jack as your first play in the suit, East would have won his queen and returned the suit. When clubs failed to break, you would have had to fall back on the diamond ace being onside. When that chance also failed to come through for you, you would have been sunk.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Cue-bid two clubs en route to four spades. You could simply jump to four spades here, but you actually have some mild slam interest, and nothing partner can do will cross you up since you have the boss suit. So you might as well show your high cards first and then bid your suit, just in case partner has his eyes on higher things.