ACES ON BRIDGE

In the Bermuda Bowl trials of 1998, the Schwartz team may have lost the war, but they won the battle on this deal.

Of course, five diamonds has no play as the cards lie, and even four hearts is not secure. In another match, David Berkowitz won the club lead and led a spade to the queen, pitched a spade on the club king and then took a diamond finesse. Now the defense got a diamond ruff and still had two winners to come.

By contrast, Ritchie Schwartz won the club lead in four hearts and banked on bringing in the trump suit for one loser. He laid down the heart ace, crossed to the spade queen and then pitched his spade on the club before leading a second trump. That line worked out well for 10 tricks, but it was an overconfident one.

Perhaps it might have been better to lead the heart ace from hand at trick two and then follow up with a second heart.

That way, declarer succeeds if he can guess which heart honor he should try to drop doubleton, and he can fall back on the diamond finesse if not. That gives him two bites at the apple rather than one.

Since East should have the doubleton heart after his preempt and the contract is in danger only if the diamond finesse loses, declarer can play East for king-doubleton rather than jack-doubleton.

One pair reached three no-trump on a club lead. Declarer won and immediately tried to sneak a spade trick, but West was there with the spade ace to clear clubs, and so the game failed.

BID WITH THE ACES

ANSWER: You do not have enough to invite game. Although you might try Stayman with this shape if you had less — in an effort to improve the part-score — that is not necessary here. You surely have the values to make one no-trump, but bad breaks could easily scuttle a major-suit partial. Pass.