Hand of the day #242
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff The old-fashioned textbooks tell you to lead k...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Cover up the East-West cards for this freak deal from the WBT Masters in Reykjavik.
Opening Lead: ♦A
With such good clubs, you conceal your hearts in favor of opening one club, only to find your next call coming at the five-level! You lack the values to bid five hearts, often getting your side way too high opposite what could be a weak hand, but when partner shows signs of life with a double (not pure penalty even here, when the opponents have a big fit), you try five hearts. When partner bids six clubs, you are confident he should not be playing you for extra high cards as opposed to shape.
West leads the diamond ace. How should you plan the play?
The hand revolves around finding the heart queen. You should delay this decision as long as possible in order to find out more about the hand, but would it not be better to make the opponents resolve your guess for you?
Try the effect of eliminating the pointed suits best you can before touching trumps. You can only afford one spade ruff with your entries as they are, but this partial elimination will still work when a defender with the singleton club ace holds at most three spades. Ruff the opening lead, cash the spade ace-king and ruff a spade high. Then lead the club queen from hand (in case West feels like ducking from ace-doubleton). Today East is endplayed, forced to either give you a ruff-and-discard (you would ruff in hand and discard from dummy), or resolve the heart position for you.
Bid with the Aces
Answer: Raise ♥
It is traditional to rebid one spade here. You could miss a 4-4 spade fit by raising hearts immediately. However, bidding two hearts over one no-trump or two clubs from partner would then guarantee extras. Bearing this in mind, it would not be unreasonable to raise hearts right away. If partner is four-four in the majors he can advance with a natural two-spade call. Now the spade fit is unearthed.
I strongly disagree! I think that if North has 5-7 points and just 4 hearts he risks to go down bidding two hearts with only 7 hearts and 16-18pp on the line. If North has also 4 spades he will not declares 2P after 2H with so few points believing to have found the fit on hearts
So you think, you know better than Bobby!!
He should be also God in person. I disagree and I explained my reasons. First of all Bridge is not a science so if you ask to many champions you often get from them several different answers... as concern Bobby for sure I don't discuss about his skills but If my opinion is different I think I can answer and say what I think. I think Bobby can appreciate it