ACES ON BRIDGE

More brain, O Lord, more brain! Or we shall mar Utterly this fine garden we might win. — George Meredith

At the U.S. National tournament in Philadelphia last March, Sunday’s A/X Swiss Teams saw a match between the Sonsini and van Overbeeke squads. This resulted in an all-Dutch cast at one of the two tables. East-West were Bauke Muller and Simon De Wijs, while North-South were Maarten Schollaardt and Tom van Overbeeke.

In today’s deal, no game looks very promising, but in four spades declarer was lucky to find clubs blocked. On opening lead, De Wijs cashed the club ace-king, then played a diamond. (A trump is no better.) Now declarer pitched his club on dummy’s top hearts, ruffed a heart low in hand, then ruffed a diamond in dummy and ruffed a club high in hand as West pitched a diamond. Now came a second diamond ruff and a second club ruff high (West underruffing), to reduce to a three-card ending where declarer had the

Q-10 of trumps and the diamond queen left. Van Overbeeke led the diamond queen, forcing West to ruff and lead a trump into his tenace to concede the contract.

Perhaps West should have underruffed twice and unblocked the diamond king (in the hope that his partner had the diamond queen), but as the cards lay, the defenders could not get out of their own way. Give East the diamond king, and the double underruff would set the game.

Since three no-trump went down three in the other room, that was a huge swing to the van Overbeeke team.

ANSWER: The simplest option is to raise diamonds via a cue-bid, but I think it is slightly superior to start with a double.Your plan is to raise diamonds to the appropriate level at your next turn, while letting your partner know you have four spades.You do not want to play in spades unless your partner can voluntarily introduce that suit, but if he has four, you want to let him know about the fit.