The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Every so often a play comes up that you see only in books. Cover up the East-West hands and we’ll find out what you’ve been reading these days.

Opening Lead: ♥6

In three no-trump on a heart lead, you play low from dummy and capture East’s jack. At trick two you run the diamond queen, West discarding a low spade and East ducking. How do you continue?

With no dummy entry to the diamonds and all the missing black-suit honors marked with West, it looks bad. But there is a way out: Play a second diamond to the ace, then a third diamond, discarding your last heart! What you have done is created a heart stopper in dummy. If the opponents want to play hearts, dummy is going to take a trick in the suit.

In practice East won the diamond king and shifted to a club ducked to West’s queen. West didn’t have much choice, so he did his best by playing the ace and a heart, putting dummy on play. Dummy’s two remaining diamonds were cashed, and now everyone was down to four cards. Dummy had the jack-doubleton of both black suits; West, the guarded king of both black suits; and South, the ace-doubleton in clubs and the A-Q of spades. South now played the ace and a second club, giving up a trick to West’s king, but took his eighth and ninth tricks with the A-Q of spades.

So, did you prove yourself to be a bookworm?

Bid with the aces

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

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