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: ♣K

When the bidding suggests that suits will be breaking unkindly, that the key finesse will fail, and an endplay is not an option, it may be the intermediate cards that will come to the rescue.

Against four spades West kicked off with three rounds of clubs, South ruffing the third. Prospects looked poor since the diamond king was almost certainly wrong, and with West having announced at least 10 cards in the minors, the 2-2 trump break that declarer needed for his contract to succeed looked unlikely.

South continued with the spade ace, collecting the jack from West and the four from East and was now at the crossroads. If spades were indeed 2-2, then he could afford to lose a diamond, and either dummy’s last trump or the heart king would take care of his third diamond.

But instinct told him that the spade jack was bare, which meant that West was likely to hold a doubleton heart. If that doubleton included the jack or 10 — or both — dummy’s heart pips would provide two diamond discards.

So declarer played the heart ace, then the queen. When West produced the jack, declarer overtook the queen with the king and ran the nine. East covered, South ruffed, then returned to dummy with the spade king, West showing out. One diamond went away on the heart eight and another on the fifth heart, and declarer had 10 tricks.

Bid with the aces

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.

Click here to play earlier Hands of the day ▶