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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♠Q

Against three no-trump West leads the spade queen. How do you plan to make nine tricks?

Outside the diamonds, you have five top tricks. So you need a minimum of four diamond tricks to make your contract. Suppose you win the spade lead with the ace and finesse the diamond jack. If the finesse loses, the spade return will mean that you won’t make nine tricks unless the diamond 10 drops. This would be the case even when the diamonds were 3-3, for the entry to the diamonds has been removed.

Accordingly, the best approach is to win the first spade (for fear of a club shift) and play a diamond to the king. Then continue by overtaking the diamond jack with dummy’s ace, even if West has followed with a small card. Here, since the diamond queen has put in an appearance, you can simply dislodge the diamond 10 from East’s hand and make nine tricks: two spades, two hearts, four diamonds and a club.

If the diamonds had been 3-3, the third round of diamonds would have established the suit, with the spade king as the entry to cash them. Notice that you will succeed when either defender began with a singleton or doubleton diamond queen or 10. As we have seen, dummy’s 9-8-7 is then good enough to allow you to knock out the remaining diamond honor, letting you collect four diamond tricks and the contract. This gives you a better than two-thirds chance to make your game.

Bid with the aces

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

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