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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥J
In response to your overcall, West leads the heart jack against four spades. Plan the defense.
In situations of this sort it is sometimes difficult to approach the problem because your instincts point you in the wrong direction. So let me prompt you with some questions. Let’s agree that our target is to take four tricks and that we do not mind conceding overtricks in exchange for a chance to defeat the game. How many quick tricks does our side have? The answer is that we have two hearts and we have to assume that we have a club trick coming, or we can surely never defeat this game.
Our best chance of a fourth winner is our diamond king. Can we just sit back and wait to score our two tricks in the minors? No indeed!
As soon as declarer knocks out our club king, then — no matter what his original club holding — he is surely going to have as many winners as he needs to discard slow diamond losers from his hand. Additionally, even if that were not so, declarer is probably threatening to pitch dummy’s slow diamond loser on the heart queen.
If this is the case, you have no hope of defeating the game unless partner has the diamond queen. If so, you need to switch to a diamond now, before either the clubs or hearts are established for a diamond discard. Therefore play a diamond at once, and hope for the best.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♥ or 3NT
Let me put it on record that a new suit in response to an overcall of a weak bid must be played as forcing, or you deprive yourself of the chance to have an intelligent conversation. Here the choice is to blast to three no-trump, to cue-bid with three diamonds and follow with three no-trump, or to bid three hearts now. I'd bid three hearts, though the cue-bid is a reasonable alternative.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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