“There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess.” – Pamela Hansford Johnson

On today’s deal, from the Bill Keohane North American Swiss Teams at Denver last year, here is Pam Granovetter at work. She was in the hot seat, declaring three no-trump. West, who had pre-empted in clubs, led off with the diamond jack. You can test your declarer play by covering up the East and West cards.

Pam took dummy’s diamond ace and decided that West was likely to have a distribution such as 2-2-3-6 with semisolid clubs. If that were so, she would need to take four spade tricks without letting East on lead. So she passed the spade eight – and it held.

She repeated the spade finesse, and when the suit split 4-2, she had 11 tricks. Note that if she plays a spade to her jack on the first round of the suit, she can recover if she is careful and guesses the ending well. She must cash the ace and king of spades next, then take both top hearts. Next, she plays three more rounds of diamonds to endplay West, who has to lead clubs around to her king for her ninth trick. This line would fail if East had 4-4-4-1 shape, though.

(Incidentally, in the other room a club lead from West meant declarer could win, cash the heart ace, then cross to the spade ace, lead a heart to the king, and now take the spade finesse for nine tricks.)

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Your partner’s two-heart call, the fourth suit, suggests he has heart length, but is unsuitable for bidding no-trump. Your best move is to bid three clubs, showing club support as well as a forcing hand. If you had only an invitational hand, you would have bid three clubs on the previous round.