Every once in a while you have the chance to pick up a hand like South as shown above. And if all of the planets are in the correct alignment your partner will have the right cards to cover your losers and bring home a big score.
Even though the South hand is good enough to demand to play game, it is often right to open strong two suited hands at the one level. It is very unlikely that this will get passed out and you have a better chance of reaching the best contract when you start at a lower level.
After North makes a simple raise South bids three hearts as a game try. He is asking North to re-evaluate his hand and bid three spades if he has a skimpy spade raise or four spades if the raise was robust. As a part of the evaluation, North should consider how the knowledge that South's second suit is hearts affects his playing stength.
North has the best hand he can have for his two spade bid and the heart singleton has to be helpful so he reponds by jumping to game. South must now decide whether to bid a small slam or a grand slam. There is no reason to bid the Blackwood convention asking for aces - he already knows where all of the aces are. The cards that he doesn't know about are the king and queen of spades. The way to find out if North has them is to jump to five no trump. This is known as the Grand Slam Force. When a trump suit has been agreed upon, a jump to five no trump asks partner to bid the grand slam if he holds two of the top three honors in the trump suit, or to bid the small slam if he does not hold both of these cards.
Having only one of the top three trump cards, North responds by bidding six spades and that becomes the final contract. The play is relatively simple. The opening lead is the three of diamonds, won by declarer's ace. The ace of spades is cashed, both defenders following. The ace of clubs is played next followed by a small spade to the king. If the queen of spades falls, as it would here, top clubs are played from dummy for heart discards and thirteen tricks are scored up. If the queen of spades does not fall under the king, top clubs are cashed for heart discards and whoever holds the queen of spades can take it at any time for the only defensive trick.
As the cards lie, declarers in the small slam will more than likely make all thirteen tricks while declarers in the grand slam will be defeated one trick. On the second round of spades, when West follows with a spade, there is a small statistical edge to taking the spade finesse. Those playing for all thirteen tricks will more than likely take this finesse and go down one trick.
Congratulations to Bob Bartko of Aurora and Wayne Ward of Newbury who traveled to the Las Vegas regional bridge tournament and finished in first place in bracket II of the morning knockout teams on January 21. Their teammates were Nancy Buechner of San Diego and Jacqueline Nordstrom of La Mesa, CA. They each won 12.5 gold masterpoints for their efforts which was more than enough to put Bartko "over the top" in his quest to become a life master. --------------------------------------------------------------------