Hand of the day #414
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the...
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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥Q
A standard Roman Key Card Blackwood auction sees you land in what turns out to be a rather poor small slam in spades. How do you plan to make 12 tricks after West leads the heart queen?
A simple line would be to win the heart ace, play three rounds of trump ending in dummy, and take the club finesse. If that succeeds, then all you would need for a 12th trick would be for diamonds to be 3-2. However, there is an extra chance you should try to exploit when trumps are 2-2.
After winning the first trick with the heart ace, you first ruff a heart. After drawing two rounds of trump with the ace and jack, you find that trumps do break 2-2, so you ruff dummy’s last heart. Once the heart suit is eliminated, you play ace, king and another diamond. When West holds three diamonds, he has to win the trick, then must either lead a club into your ace-queen tenace or play a heart. The latter allows you to ruff in dummy while discarding the club queen from hand. Either way, you have 12 tricks.
If East had won the third round of diamonds, he would have to play a club, and the fate of the contract would hinge on which defender began with the club king.
If trumps were not 2-2, you would take the club finesse after drawing the second round of trumps with dummy’s jack.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 2♠
A partnership needs to agree if pass here would be to play, or is the Pontius Pilate pass. (You got me into this; you get me out of it!) I prefer the simple agreement that all passes of redoubles after a pre-empt has been doubled are to play, so I have to bid here. I'd start by bidding two spades, perhaps planning to redouble if doubled.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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