Bookworm Bridge Conundrums #84
This conundrum was written by NICOLAS LHUISSIER and was originally pub...
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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥2
The general rule about signaling is that you encourage to get a suit continued, and discourage to get the obvious shift. Occasionally, though, an unusual card should wake partner up to making a counterintuitive play.
In today’s deal from the Seattle Board-a-Match, Sid Brownstein, South, bravely balanced into his opponents’ suit, and his partner took him seriously. Against three spades doubled, the low heart lead went to the king and East’s ace, and East cashed the diamond ace, West signaling with a middle diamond. East now played back the heart jack, on which Brownstein carefully discarded his diamond king, eliminating the threat of the diamond ruff. When declarer subsequently located the club queen, he was able to wrap up 730.
In my opinion, both defenders were responsible for the poor result. East really should have shifted to a low spade at trick three — what high card other than the spade king could his partner hold that would set the contract and without that card how could West have doubled three spades? Equally, West might well have dropped the diamond jack on his partner’s play of the ace. This would have been an “oddball” signal to wake up partner to the need to play the unusual suit to get his ruff — in this case, a trump!
Here, by contrast, the diamond queen would simply show the queen and jack and suggest to East that he could continue the suit if he wanted to, or was able to.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♥
Your partner's cuebid is Michaels, showing 5-5 or more in hearts and a minor. If you were asked to guess, you would assume that your easiest game would be four hearts, so bid it. But if the opponents bid on to four spades, you should not sell out. Instead, compete with four no-trump to find partner's minor.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.
