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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♦8

Today's deal was played by the Canadian great Sam Gold in the 50s. Sam has been inducted into the Canadian Bridge Hall of Fame for his services to the game in Montreal.

Have a look at today’s deal, and count the top tricks. It looks like 10 — five spades, three hearts and two aces — with an 11th trick looking to be something of a struggle. Sam was in six spades on an unfriendly diamond lead — let’s see how he set about making 12 tricks.

The diamond eight went to dummy’s ace. A diamond ruffed high let declarer lead the spade 10 to the jack, allowing another diamond to be ruffed high. Now came the spade six to the eight, and a third diamond ruff, denuding both opponents of the suit.

Gold led a heart to the king, and the spade nine drew the opponent’s last trump as Gold threw a club. The heart ace and queen disclosed the bad break in that suit, but Gold now calmly threw East in with his heart jack to lead away from his club king into dummy’s tenace. Contract made!

This is a perfect example of what the experts describe as a dummy reversal. Declarer ruffed three times in the long trump hand and drew trump from the short hand, turning five trump tricks into six. One of the requirements is decent trump spots in dummy and of course a 3-2 trump break (but that is heavily with the odds).

Bid with the aces

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

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