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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥9
Today's deal comes from one of the major tournaments in Australia. It features the need for careful play in a delicate contract of five diamonds. You must establish winners in the black suits, but to do so, you need to come to hand in trumps, thus reducing your ability to make your trumps separately via a crossruff.
Against five diamonds the heart nine is led and ruffed. Declarer needs to play a diamond to hand to lead a spade to dummy. Suppose West wins the spade ace, as he surely will (East suggesting a doubleton spade), and plays his remaining heart — thereby marking him with only one trump, as he would have surely led a second trump if he had one.
You ruff the second heart and must throw a heart on dummy’s spade king, then ruff a spade to hand as East pitches a club. Now comes a club — let us say West wins the ace. If West now leads a fourth spade, East cannot discard a club, or declarer will draw the last trump and will have two club winners. If he discards anything else, declarer will cash his club winner and will crossruff.
So West does best to duck the first club, and dummy’s king wins. Now dummy’s last spade is led, and, when East does not ruff, declarer throws his club jack. West no longer has an entry to East for the second trump play, so declarer makes the last five tricks on a crossruff.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♥
Minimum as you are in high-card points, you cannot do less than bid four hearts to emphasize heart shortage with a club raise. Admittedly, some of the time your partner might be able to infer this from his own heart length, but you owe it to him to describe your hand at one go and let him proceed from here.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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