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
We carry on with this week’s theme of camouflaging the led suit in defense.
Opening Lead: ♥J
West opens a weak two hearts, raised to game by East to consume bidding space. With so many high cards and excellent spades, South takes his life in his hands with four spades. However, doubling would risk losing the spade fit and passing would be just as risky in its own way.
West leads the heart jack and East must form a plan before playing to trick one. Clearly, declarer intends to establish dummy’s clubs for diamond discards. East must attack diamonds while West remains with a control card in the black suits, and it is best to lead the suit through South in case there is a king-jack guess.
There in lies the problem. Everyone knows East has the heart ace as West surely would not underlead it. If East wins the first trick with the king, declarer will know West began with one point in hearts and should continue on the assumption that West holds the club king too (or the contract is likely to be cold). West can hold either diamond honor, and declarer will guess right at least half the time.
If, on the other hand, East takes the heart ace, the card he is known to hold, before shifting to a low diamond, declarer is likely to place the heart king on his left, together with the heart jack and assumed club king. That is seven points, and the diamond ace would give him too much for a weak two. Declarer is apt to put up the diamond king and go down.
Bid with the Aces
Answer: 2NT
You do not have enough for three clubs, which is game-forcing. However, you could easily miss a game by rebidding only two clubs. I would raise to two no-trump, describing my values well. With semi-balanced shape and high cards in my short suits, I do not particularly mind losing a club fit.
5-4-2-2 is not properly a semi balanced hand. The only real well semi balanced hand is 5-3-3-2. I don't think 2nt properly reflects the strenght of my hand and even if it's an invitation to 3nt just when my partner has at least 8-9 points he will decide to increase to 3nt. I prefer to bid 3 clubs: the risk to not do 3nt with the worst case i.e 24 points on the line is low. Furtherly I give my partner additional information about my distribution i.e. 5 spades and 4 clubs. Last but not the least: we are'nt vulnerable