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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦K
One secret of defense is to play partner for the minimum that he needs to let you beat the contract. On a hand like today's the auction has told you before dummy comes down that you won't find many values in your partner's hand — both opponents appear to have opening bids and you have a 15-count.
Against four hearts you lead the diamond king, on which partner plays the nine — suggesting an original holding of a doubleton or singleton — and declarer follows with the five. Plan the defense.
Your best chance is to find your partner with the heart jack or queen. If he has a trump honor and uses it wisely, you can create a fourth defensive trick from nowhere. You cash the diamond queen at trick two, hoping that partner will show out, but both East and South follow suit. No matter; you next play the diamond three.
If the layout is as shown in the diagram and partner remembers to ruff in with the jack (he should, since you are known to have the diamond ace) there is no way for declarer to succeed. He must overruff, but now you will come to both a trump trick and a black king.
Note that if you don’t try to promote a trump but exit passively with a heart at trick three, declarer draws trump and runs the diamond jack, pitching a club, after which he has the rest with the help of the spade finesse.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♥9
It is hard to reconstruct the full hand, but dummy rates to have short spades and both minors, and declarer to have some degree of diamond fit and partner perhaps to have both majors — and maybe only two or three clubs. A low-spade lead might set up tricks for our side as fast as anything, but the heart nine is far safer, if less aggressive.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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