A well bid slam.
Bridge Column for December 23, 2001, Harvey Bernstein
Neither side vulnerable.  West deals.
                              North
                              S: Void             
                              H: 8 6 4 2     
                              D: A 8 7 5 4   
                              C: A K Q 2 
            West                             East
            S: K Q 9 7 4                     S: A J 10 5 3 2 
            H: K 9                           H: Q 7        
            D: Q J 10 6                      D: 3                 
            C: 9 8                           C: 10 7 6 5    
                              South                         
                              S: 8 6  
                              H: A J 10 5 3 
                              D: K 9 2   
                              C: J 4 3    
          The Bidding:  
                   West   North     East   South                  
                    1S     Dbl       4S     5H  
                   Pass    6H       Pass    Pass
                   Pass    
     This hand was played at a local duplicate game.  It once
again illustrates the power of distribution over high card
points.  West bid one spade and North made a take-out double. 
East mad an excellent bid of four spades.  This contract should
be defeated only one trick, and the bid makes finding the correct
spot very tough for the North-South partnership.
     South has only nine points, but the good news is that none
of those points are in spades, so all of his cards must be
working.  He is also aware that the four spade bid is pre-
emptive, or weak in nature, and does not necessarily mean that
the East-West pair can take ten tricks.  I think that his five
heart bid is excellent.
     When it gets back to North he could very easily pass.  There
is no guarantee that eleven tricks are available in a heart
contract, let alone twelve, but South did compete voluntarily at
the five level.  The North hand is easily a trick better than it
would have to be for the take-out double, and it is doubtful that
there are any wasted values in the spade suit, so trying for the
small slam seems to be reasonable.
     West leads the king of spades and the hand is over quickly. 
The opening lead is trumped in dummy and a heart finesse loses to
the king.  The queen of diamonds is ducked around to the king. 
Declarer trumps his last spade in dummy and then leads dummies
last heart.  When East produces the queen, declarer wins and
claims twelve tricks.
     East says that his side would have defeated the contract if
West had led a diamond at trick one instead of the king of
spades.  His rationale is that he is holding a singleton diamond
and when West regains the lead with the king of hearts he will be
able to lead a second diamond for East to trump.
     While the hand could work out that way, if West is allowed
to change his opening lead after he sees all four hands, then the
declarer should be allowed to change his line of play.  In this
case, faced with the potential loss of a trump on the second
diamond lead, declarer will decide to not take a heart finesse. 
Instead, he will play the ace of hearts and another, crashing the
outstanding heart honors.  This play also works any time hearts
divide 3-1 if the singleton is the king or the queen.  Try it!   
_______________________________________________________
Bernstein is a free-lance writer in Solon.