Hand of the day #116

The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff


Defense has sometimes been described as the art of the possible. When you are playing teams or rubber bridge, overtricks tend to be irrelevant. You should try to picture a hand that will let you defeat the contract, and then go for it, no matter how unlikely it is.

Opening Lead: K

Conversely, if you think you can set a contract easily, you should concentrate on covering the bases, defeating the contract even when declarer has a better or different hand than his expected one.

Defending today’s three spades, you lead the heart king and partner’s signal tells you he has four hearts. (It is a good idea to use count signals on the lead of a king in a bid and supported suit.) Should you cash a second top heart? Yes — declarer may (and today he will) pitch his second heart on a high club if you don’t take it at once.

It should then be apparent that three spades can be defeated only if East holds the spade ace or diamond ace. He cannot hold more than that for his pre-emptive raise — with as much as a limit raise, East would have jumped to two no-trump. 

Thus, West should shift to his diamond jack at trick three. Careful defense from this point on, with West winning the first round of spades (and East steeling himself to duck his ace if a trump is led from dummy), will result in a diamond ruff from West to beat the contract.


Bid with the aces

This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.

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5 comments on “Hand of the day #116”

  1. disagree 3s is confusing! withthe first dbl partner communicate 4s (with 5s he should bid 1s) so 3s is useless. My suggestion is 4d (invite to play 5d with maximum ie. 11-12pp) or pass!

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