Hand of the day #378

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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: A

"Cover an honor with an honor" is a well-known bridge adage, but as with most such rules, there are plenty of exceptions. Today's declarer exploited East's knee-jerk reaction to cover. But perhaps it would be best to start by concealing the East-West cards, and only then to make your plan on the lead of the diamond ace followed by a shift to the club five. (Yes, a spade switch would have been the killer.)

In four hearts, declarer won with dummy’s ace, drew the outstanding trumps with the ace and king, and astutely played the spade jack from the dummy. East played the king… and the rest is history.

East could not attack clubs to advantage, so he continued with another diamond. Declarer ruffed in the dummy and played a spade to the queen and West’s ace. West played another club, but declarer won the king, played a spade to his 10, crossed back to dummy with a trump, and cashed the spade nine, discarding his club loser.

When you think about it, it is hard to see how covering the spade jack could gain. Unfortunately for him, East did not think about it!

The “power of the closed hand” is worth remembering. All things being equal, it often works well to play toward the closed hand rather than toward the dummy. It generally makes it much harder for the defenders to decide whether to win or duck when they cannot see what third hand will play.

Bid with the aces

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

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