Hand of the day #343
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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥J
This week's deals all come from the European Championships. Since these were held in Poznan, Poland, there was a very strong Polish representation.
Lukasz Brede and Wojciech Strzemecki for Team Connector produced an elegant result during the qualifying rounds of the Teams.
Strzemecki, West, led the heart jack against three no-trump. Brede overtook in the hopes that West would play him for a six-card suit for his pre-empt and would win the trick. Cautiously West played low, knowing that East might have cheated on his suit length. Now Brede, seeing his own lack of entries, thoughtfully shifted to a spade. Declarer won in hand and advanced the club jack, ducked, then the club king, covered by West’s ace for a second spade back, taking out declarer’s entry to dummy.
West won the third club and now exited with his last heart, which reduced declarer to just his five diamonds and a losing heart. He could do no better than lead a diamond to dummy, hoping the queen was with West. Brede took this trick and cashed out the hearts for three down – and a 5 IMP gain, since three no-trump went one down in the other room.
Just for the record, declarer should have played a diamond to dummy’s jack after the club jack held the trick. Had he done so, he would have collected four diamonds, three spades and one trick in each of the other suits, to make his game.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♥
The jump to four of a major in response to one of that suit should be played as weak, but the precise range for the call should not be tightly defined. This is a typical example of a maximum for the call. With so much of the hand in hearts, it is easy to see that it offers next to no defense to any contract played by the opponents. So it is ideal for this action.
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.