Hand of the day #380
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the...
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦K
How will you play six spades on a top diamond lead? You win it in dummy, ditching a club. You have five side-suit winners and will make the slam if you can add seven trump tricks. Since your main objective is to single in your small trump, you ruff a diamond at trick two and cash the spade ace, hoping for a 2-2 trump break. It looks disastrous when West discards a diamond, but you simply continue to score your low trumps. You take the heart ace, ruff a diamond, then cross to the heart king to ruff a heart. Now comes the club ace and a heart ruff. Next you cross to dummy with the club king and lead dummy's diamond 10.
You have taken the first 10 tricks (six tricks in aces and kings and four ruffs in hand) and are down to the K-10 of spades and one losing club. Meanwhile, East has the Q-J-9 of spades left, but he cannot prevent you from scoring your trump 10. If he ruffs with the spade queen or jack, you will discard the club 10 and finesse on East’s forced trump return; if he ruffs low, you can overruff with the 10.
The pitfall to be avoided was that if you take a third diamond ruff too early, East would discard the second of his three clubs. Then you would lose one of your club winners. However, by ruffing the two hearts before the final diamond, you prevented East from making a damaging discard.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4NT
It is very tempting to drive for slam here. Your controls are excellent, but you have at most 32 HCP and no great fit. Nonetheless, your great controls argue for taking an aggressive position. (Imagine partner with five decent clubs and an ace and two kings on the side.) Bidding four no-trump as quantitative, not Blackwood, is reasonable, and might get you to six clubs when it is right.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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