Hand of the day #245
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff In today’s deal from the Philadelphia world ...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
The World Bridge Tour was originally founded during the pandemic to provide world-class online competition. The organization (separate to the recently-founded World Bridge Federation World Bridge Tour) now hosts week-long face-to-face tournaments all over Europe.
This week’s deals are from the round robin phase of that tournament in Reykjavik, Iceland this January.
Opening Lead: ♠K
We begin with a partscore deal. This arose in the match between the Sandfia and De Botton teams, where both defenders shone.
Each South declared two hearts on a transfer sequence and West led the spade king, ducked, followed by the spade jack to South’s ace. Declarer finessed the heart 10, East taking the heart ace then continuing with the spade 10, which West let hold. Then came a club shift to West’s queen. Now West placed his partner with the heart nine after declarer’s play of a heart to the 10 rather than the heart nine from hand. Either that, or declarer had three and was bringing them in come what may. West led the 13th spade to promote a trump trick for himself; if declarer ruffed with the heart jack, he would subsequently lose two tricks to West’s queen-eight. Letting East score the heart nine worked no better; both declarers lost two further tricks for one down.
(At double-dummy, declarer could have succeeded by discarding a club from dummy on the fourth spade, then finessing the heart seven and later working a trump coup against West.)
Bid with the Aces
Answer: Lead the diamond three.
West will often have short spades on this auction, having failed to give preference back to spades. Thus, you should lead a trump to try and cut down on spade ruffs. Best lead low, as the ace might crash partner’s honor and if partner has the doubleton diamond queen or king you want to make it easy to play a third round of trumps.