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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥K
An online discussion group devoted to bridge, called "rec.games.bridge," features problems and discussions. Andrzej Matuszewski posted this neat deal, in which you reach four spades after West has shown at least nine cards in the majors (and yes, five diamonds might have been easier). Plan the play on the defense of two top hearts.
If you ruff the second heart and play ace, king and a third round of trumps, West will win and lead hearts, forcing dummy to ruff with the master trump. Equally, if you discard a losing club from dummy at trick two, a third round of hearts dooms you, whichever hand you take the ruff in.
A good try is to ruff the second heart and cash the club ace, then cross to the spade ace and lead a second club to the king. If West has a singleton club, he does best to discard a diamond. You would then lead out your winning diamonds, and West must discard twice. That allows declarer simply to draw trump in the ending. However, today, with West having a third club, he simply ruffs the second diamond and cashes a club, with a trump trick to come.
The solution is to ruff the heart at trick two, and lead a spade to the ace and a low spade from hand. West must win his queen and play another heart, but you throw a club from dummy and ruff in hand, and now lose just one more trump trick.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♦
This auction is forcing, suggesting an original 6-4 hand pattern. With a singleton heart, you do not want to play in that suit unless partner insists, and with no aces you cannot jump to five diamonds. Your choice is to revert to four diamonds or bid three no-trump — and you have no source of tricks unless partner's hearts are semisolid or better. That argues for a four-diamond call.
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.
