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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦K
all this week's deals come from summer's national tournament in Philadelphia.
This deal was played in the first qualifying session of the von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs. See if you can find the textbook defensive play found by at least two defenders.
As West you are happy to pass for penalties when your partner finds the reopening double of the pre-emptive two-spade call. For want of anything better to do, you lead partner’s suit, kicking off with the diamond king. The singleton diamond in dummy is not a welcome sight. How do you proceed?
At least two defenders — Billy Eisenberg and Glenn Milgrim — found the play to collect the maximum penalty: the spade king. After that shift, declarer could win the ace, but if she ruffed a diamond with dummy’s queen, the trump trick West had seemingly given up would come back.
Incidentally, on a medium spade switch, declarer could have put up the queen, ruffed out the club ace, then ruffed a diamond low and taken a discard on the club queen. At the end, West would be the victim of a trump endplay, and declarer would have finished only one down.
At these two tables, and quite possibly a few others, the end result was plus 500 for the defenders, good for close to a 90 percent result.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♣Q
You have a tricky choice, on a hand where it is not clear that you really want a ruff. Partner's bidding would be consistent for some with a hand with a bad spade suit, or a dead minimum overcall and decent spades, or even a hand with spades and diamonds. So leading your spade honor might easily cost you a trick. That argues for risking partner's wrath by leading a club honor.
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.
