Hand of the day #413
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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣K
Plan the play in six hearts on the club king lead assuming a 2-1 heart break.
Before you play a card, count your tricks if you decide to draw trump, to avoid unpleasant accidents in the spade suit.
You draw trump in two rounds and have six trump left to take separately; that makes eight tricks. Three black suit winners makes 11, so what you will need to do is establish an extra trick in spades. That would be a good bet if the opponents had not bid (best is to cash the king and ace then lead up to the jack) but here the auction has made this no better than even chance – probably rather worse.
There are several possibilities but the bidding makes the best line stand out. Win the club ace and draw two rounds of trump ending in hand then play the diamond queen, discarding a spade if West does not cover. Win the return, and play the diamond jack. If West covers you ruff, ruff a club to hand and discard dummy’s last spade on the diamond 10; if West doesn’t cover the diamond jack, the spade loser goes away immediately.
Even without the opponents bidding, this line would be a 75 percent chance. The way to calculate the chance of success is to work out that the line works unless both diamond honors are offside – and the chance of that that is one quarter (one half of one half). So you succeed the other three quarters of the time.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Pass
It is typically correct to raise partner's overcall with three trump, but here you have a minimum (maybe sub-minimum) for that action and your values are primarily defensive. Worse: you do not want to encourage partner to lead clubs unless he has a natural lead of that suit. So pass, don't raise.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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