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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♥Q

Today's deal emphasizes the point that bridge is not a game that you can learn by mastering one theme and extrapolating it to other deals.

First of all, let’s see what happened at the unsuccessful table in a teams match. Against three no-trump, the heart queen was led to the ace. The diamond 10 went to the ace, and declarer took the losing spade finesse. The next heart was ducked and South won the third rouind of hearts, throwing a spade from dummy. At this point he must have felt confident he was going to succeed. After all, if West had the diamond queen, the finesse would work. If East had it, the hearts were not a threat.

But when declarer led the diamond nine and West showed out, East ducked. Now the contract was no longer makable. With no entries to dummy there were just eight tricks.

Declarer had in a sense done well. If he takes the diamond finesse immediately, East clears hearts and the contract will depend on the success or failure of the spade finesse. However, at the other table South led the spade jack from his hand at trick two, a truly unnatural play, but one that would generate nine tricks no matter how the defense played. When West took the trick and continued the attack on hearts, South ducked, won the third round of hearts, and now ran the diamond 10. Whether East took this or the next diamond, South had four diamond winners and nine tricks.

Bid with the aces

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

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