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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♦Q

In today's deal, North-South need to be able to judge the presence or absence of the two black jacks in order to see what level they should play at. If they had both of those cards, a grand slam would be the target, while with one of them, 12 tricks would be a cakewalk. However, with neither of them, some careful play is required for declarer to give himself every opportunity to bring home 12 tricks.

So how are you going to make six spades after the diamond-queen lead? Presumably, you start by drawing trump. When West shows out on the second round, the focus shifts to trying to avoid losing a club and a trump if neither suit behaves.

Since East has trump length, he rates to be short in clubs, if anyone is. (If he is long in both suits, it will be easy to play to ruff a club on the board.)

You need to protect yourself against both 4-2 and 5-1 club breaks. You cannot afford to have a club honor ruffed away, so play a club to the ace and a club toward your hand. It does not help East to trump in, since he would be ruffing a loser. Win the club king and cross back to dummy with the heart king to lead another club toward your hand. Again, it doesn’t help East to ruff, so he discards again. Now you can ruff a club in dummy. East can overruff, but that will be his only trick.

Bid with the aces

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

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