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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♣A

J. David King, who notched his 10,000th masterpoint in 1993 brought home a very difficult contract against Alan and Ellen Siebert here. King's partner was Marguerite Holley.

Declaring five spades, King ruffed the second round of clubs and led the spade queen. With this type of layout, it is imperative to lead high from the hand with one honor to protect against the very situation that existed here, namely all four trumps with East. (West could not hold four spades after his unusual no-trump.) King continued with the spade10, covered by the jack and won with the king.

It is not too common to finesse in a suit where you have no natural loser, but King knew that he was going to have to find a way to dispose of all of his diamonds. The chances were that he was going to run into a 5-0 break. So he took a heart finesse, and next picked up trumps by leading to the eight and then cashing the ace.

Now came the diamond queen, covered by the king and won with the ace — and sure enough, West had all the diamonds. King cashed the heart ace, pitching a diamond, and ruffed a heart, drawing the last nondiamond card from West. Finally, he led a diamond toward dummy’s seven, and West was helpless. She won with the nine, but then had to lead away from the 10-6 into the J-8.

Bid with the aces

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

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