Hand of the day #566
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the...
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥2
Here, you reach a slam after the opponents pre-empt, warning you of bad breaks to come. North's four-club call was a cuebid, agreeing spades, since having opened one no-trump, he would never go past three no-trump without a fit for you. That encourages you to follow the simple route to six spades.
On the lead of the heart two to the ace, you can be entirely sure that hearts are splitting 7-1. That is good news if you plan to construct an endplay, since West has no communications to his partner’s hand. After winning the heart ace, you draw trump, throwing a heart from the table. Now can you do better than taking the simple club finesse?
Yes, you can; start by playing a diamond to the queen. Then lead a low club from the table and cover East’s card with the nine. Here West wins with the 10 and plays back a second diamond. You now take the diamond ace and king, then play the spade 10, throwing the last heart from dummy. This reduces everyone to three cards, and East is squeezed; he cannot keep both the hearts and clubs guarded.
Instead of relying on the club finesse — a 50 percent chance — you followed a line of play that would win whenever West had either the club 10 or club queen. By testing diamonds and spades and getting an inferential count of hearts, you would always be sure how many clubs East started with, and thus whether a finesse was necessary in the three-card ending.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♣3
It must surely be the best percentage action to lead a club, assuming you should be able to set partner's suit up at the cost of no more than two tempos. And you should lead low here — do not lead top or middle from three cards in a situation like this, in order to help partner work out the count. He should have a shrewd idea on the honor location in clubs when dummy comes down.
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.
We've established East's 1 7 1 4 distribution; we pull trumps, cash our diamond winners and play the last trump: 4 cards remaining. If East is now 0-1-0-3, we throw East in with the heart. If East is now 0-2-0-2, we cash A,K of clubs and the jack is good.