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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♥Q

In today's deal South might have looked for a slam after the two-no-trump rebid. Over the forcing rebid of three spades, North can cooperate with slam interest or sign off in no-trump or spades with a minimum in context.

As it was, though, it was just as well that South restrained himself, because even 10 tricks proved quite difficult to accumulate. West led the heart queen and declarer rightly refused to play dummy’s king on the first two rounds. (If West held Q-J-10-x-x, East’s ace would appear on the second round and dummy’s king would be worth a trick.)

But how would you continue the play when the defenders take three heart tricks and East then switches to a club? You win in dummy and run the trump nine successfully. When you lead dummy’s last trump and finesse the queen, West shows out. What now? You must aim for a trump-coup end-position where you hold A-J of trumps in your hand and the lead is in dummy. Because of the shortage of entries to dummy, you must cross your fingers and lead a diamond to the 10, ruff a club, re-enter dummy with the diamond queen, and ruff another club. When you cross to dummy’s diamond ace East follows suit, and you have reached the required two-card end position. Your A-J of trumps sit over East’s K-8 and the lead is in dummy. You can play a club and take the rest whatever East does.

Bid with the aces

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

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