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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥3
In today's deal South drove to game by showing his two-suiter, then guessed to rebid four clubs rather than gamble out three no-trump, and was raised to five.
The defenders led two rounds of hearts, then East exited passively with a small diamond. Declarer won in hand cashed two top clubs, then crossed to the spade ace and took the club finesse and claimed the rest when diamonds behaved.
While East was telling his partner that there was nothing he could have done, West was wearily shaking his head in a successful effort to irritate East; can you see why?
There is a defense to five clubs, though it is hard to find. After winning two heart tricks, East can see that the main hope to defeat the contract is by winning a club trick. He should also realize that, given the chance, declarer will lead two rounds of clubs and find out East has the guarded club jack, then cross to dummy, and finesse the jack. To prevent this, East must shift to a spade at trick three and remove declarer’s side-entry to dummy before he finds out about the four-one club split. The bidding indicates the likelihood of South having solid diamonds (and shifting to a spade would not help declarer avoid a diamond loser if he has one).
Even if South were void in spades, and had 100 honors in trumps, it would take an iron nerve (or a peek) to finesse against the jack on the first round.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♣
With three-card support for partner, you should simply raise to four clubs. Even though your partner did not relay with a call of two no-trump, you should play the bid of three clubs as natural and forcing. That being so, you can raise and let partner revert to spades if he sees fit.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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