Hand of the day #300
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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♠K
claimed that he had been desperately unlucky to run into a lie of the cards that led to his defeat in today's deal. But you, the jury, will get to decide his case. Was he unlucky or careless?
What happened at the table would probably be mirrored at many tables in even a top-level duplicate field. Against four hearts West led three rounds of spades. Declarer ruffed the third one, cashed the heart ace and king, and was discomfited to see West with the length. He switched his attention to clubs, and when two rounds of the suit stood up, he played a third. West ruffed and exited with the heart jack to leave declarer with a diamond loser.
South was at fault for not taking the diamond finesse after two rounds of clubs, but as the cards lie, that would not have helped.
However, a better approach would be to ruff the spade at trick three, then play the heart ace and follow up with the heart 10. If West wins and plays another spade, you can ruff in dummy, then cross back to hand with the diamond ace, and draw trump. If East wins and leads a diamond through, you simply rise with the ace and run the clubs after extracting the remaining trump.
Almost but not quite as good is to draw one trump, then cross to dummy with a club to play a heart toward your hand, intending to finesse. However, you might conceivably run into a club ruff by following this line..
Bid with the aces
What would you do? Think about it and click here for the answer.
Answer: 4♥
This is a difficult hand to evaluate. You have enough to commit the hand to game in spades, but if you believe you have enough to make a mild slam-try (which is aggressive but certainly not unreasonable), then you should bid four hearts now. This has nothing to do with presence or absence of a heart control, but simply shows opening-bid values in a raise to at least four spades.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.