Hand of the day #195
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff Fred Gitelman of Canada was part of the team t...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
It is always embarrassing to make a technical error, and to perpetrate it on Vugraph in front of a large audience makes the experience even more painful. Carefully consider the play as South in six spades on a club lead if you want to avoid humiliation — and the turnover of a significant number of IMPs.
Opening Lead: ♣2
What happened in the real world (at the 2000 Bermuda Bowl) was that declarer won the club lead and cashed the top spades, discovering the loser there, then took the diamond ace and king before going to dummy in hearts. When she tried to cash the diamond queen, East ruffed, and while declarer could pitch on this trick, there was still a club or heart loser for declarer one way or the other.
The correct line allows the contract to succeed. Win the club lead, cash the spade king, then take the top diamonds. While you might fail against a 4-1 diamond split, that is considerably less likely than a 3-1 spade split. (Just for the record, spades split evenly somewhat less than half the time; diamonds split 3-2 just over two-thirds of the time.)
Now cross to dummy with the spade ace and cash the diamond queen, discarding your club loser. East can ruff in, of course, but you still have the priceless re-entry to dummy in the heart ace and can discard your heart loser at your leisure.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 1NT
I do not want you to think I’m a fuddy-duddy; sometimes one has to break the rules. Ignore the fact that you have a six-card suit and instead focus on the fact that this hand is approximately balanced, in the 15-17 range, so the least lie comes from opening it one no-trump. Opening one diamond will give you an ugly rebid problem, no matter what partner does.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
i would open 1nt