The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

In competitive bidding, when one side has hearts and the other spades, it is often a good idea to keep on bidding to four spades over four hearts. Even if your contract fails, theirs may make. And sometimes both contracts can come home.

Opening Lead: ♠K

At one table, the contract was four hearts, and the spade king was led. Declarer had little choice but to win, overtake his diamond king with dummy’s ace, and cash the diamond queen, pitching a spade. He now ruffed a diamond and played a heart to dummy’s jack. East ducked this, but declarer accurately ran winning diamonds from the dummy. Whenever East ruffed in, declarer could overruff and play a second trump, ultimately reaching dummy via a club ruff.

It might appear that East could have done better by winning the heart ace and forcing the dummy with three rounds of clubs. However, declarer simply ruffs the third club in dummy and plays a winning diamond as before. East ruffs and declarer overruffs, ruffs a club high in the dummy and plays more winning diamonds.

In the other room, hearts were never mentioned when East initially treated his hand as a raise to three spades — something of an overbid — and West declared four spades. Here North led a club, which declarer won to play a trump. When South won the spade ace and played the diamond king, North missed his only chance to beat the contract. When he failed to overtake, four spades could no longer be beaten.

Bid with the aces

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

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