Hand of the day #137
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff At the Dyspeptics Club neither North nor South...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
This month I am running a few deals from Eddie Kantar’s latest book, “Take Your Tricks.” There are no less than 500 pieces of advice, each accompanied by an example of how to do better on defending or declaring.
Today’s advice is that the stronger the trump suit, the more careful you must be to conserve trump entries to the hand that you are establishing.
Opening Lead: ♠10
In today’s deal, you have bid to an optimistic 5♣. With two top hearts to lose, and a slow spade loser lurking, the only realistic hope is to set up the diamonds. If your opponents were playing the hand, they would find diamonds 3-3; but you do not get to be so lucky!
Assuming a normal 4-2 division, THREE diamonds must be ruffed in your hand. This requires three dummy entries outside the diamond ace. As Eddie says, if that ♣3 doesn’t look like an entry to you, get a new pair of glasses.
So long as you ruff three diamonds HIGH, conserving your precious ♣2, you will be able to set up the diamonds eventually by leading the ♣2 to dummy’s three. Your partner will love you, and the club two will be proud of you.
One more point: the defenders could set the hand, either by leading a heart and shifting to a trump, or by leading a trump immediately. That takes an entry out of dummy prematurely.
Bid with the Aces
Answer: Pass
This is nominally an invitational sequence, and you should expect to be facing a hand of about 10 points with two or three diamonds. You have a little in reserve, and if your diamond spots were better, you might try for 3NT. But facing a doubleton diamond, you cannot be confident of running the suit, so I would advocate passing here.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
Who wants to bid 3D with a doubleton diamond ?