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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♣10

Today's deal is from Robert Ewen and Jeff Rubens' book, "It's all in the game." As I mentioned before, this book melds humorous and instructive deals. Today's is a real-life affair, in which a name from the past found a neat play to recover from his unfortunate opening lead.

A trump lead would defeat four spades by force. But when the club 10 was led, North’s queen was played, and East had to duck. South cashed the heart ace and led a diamond to the queen and king. Now when South regained the lead and cashed the diamond ace, the fall of the J-10 allowed him to bang down the two top trumps: making four.

At another table, however, Peter Leventritt recovered from his opening lead by smoothly ducking the diamond queen. Then, when South cashed the diamond ace and East followed with the jack, South pictured his original holding as K-J-10. When declarer tried to ruff a low diamond in dummy, East overruffed and gave West a club ruff. West led another diamond, giving East another overruff of dummy. Finally, a further club from East promoted a trump winner for the fourth and setting defensive trick.

At IMPs, declarer could have ensured the contract (except against a 5-1 trump split) by abandoning diamonds temporarily when the jack dropped, and cashing two high spades. This play, however, could lose the contract if diamonds were 3-3 and spades 5-1. I’ve seen many deceptive ducks, but never one done in quite this way for quite this reason.

Bid with the aces

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

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