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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥2
On today's deal, Brian Glubok won the best-played-hand award at the Cavendish Pairs, an auction event with a $100,000 first prize.
Glubok (South) showed his two suits to finish up in four hearts, and that helped West find an intelligent low-trump lead to protect his club tenace. Glubok won the opening lead in hand and next led an imaginative low diamond to the jack and king. Not surprisingly, East could not work out that he needed to give his partner a diamond ruff. Instead, he tried to take his partner off a subsequent endplay by shifting to the club seven, which went to the 10 and queen. A second trump was won in dummy, and a spade was ruffed in hand. Now Glubok had a shrewd idea of how the clubs were lying. He cashed two more trumps and the diamond ace, then led his low diamond to the queen.
In the four-card ending, West, who was holding two spades and three clubs, was caught in a trump squeeze, forced to let go of a spade. This is a card that looks immaterial — and so it was, in a sense. However, at this point Glubok ruffed a spade back to hand with his last trump and exited with the club 10, unblocking the club eight from dummy. In the two-card ending, West was reduced to two clubs and had to lead from the 9-2 into declarer’s A-6 tenace.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♠
It looks simple enough to bid three spades now, but is that enough? If partner has what you expect (five or six diamonds and four spades in a strong hand), you are offering him four useful cards, two in each of his suits. It may be putting undue trust in him, but I'd drive to four spades and expect it to be at worst on a finesse.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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Should not have given first bid. Bid now is pass as South does not have enough points and any further bid would lead to a game bid which North cannot win.