The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Do you enjoy measuring your performance against that of the world’s experts? If so, take the East seat and cover up the South and West hands. You will be defending against three no-trump.

Opening Lead: ♠3

Partner leads the spade three (fourth-highest leads) and your queen holds. Where do you go for honey? It can do no harm to cash the spade king, for if South had held the ace, he would have played it on your queen, trying to guarantee a second trick in the suit for his side. Your concern is the whereabouts of the spade jack. If your partner has that card, life should be easy for the defense.

Irritatingly, South produces the jack under your king. South must have most of the outstanding honors, apart from the spade ace, for his bidding. How do you set up an extra trick for your side?

The bottom line is that nothing you do really matters if declarer has a doubleton diamond, but what if he has a singleton diamond? Maybe you can disrupt his communications.

So reasoned Italian World Champion Alfredo Versace, who returned a low diamond to the nine, jack and ace. See the effect of this. Declarer is forced to take dummy’s three diamond tricks before he is ready to do so — which would have been after he had set up a heart trick and not before. Now declarer could not come to nine tricks before the defenders came to five, the fifth being West’s diamond six.

Bid with the aces

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

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