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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♠J
Generally speaking, when you have two or more touching honors in a suit, it is normal to lead one of them, while you tend to lead low when you have only a single honor. But, as always, using your brain rather than blindly following rules is a better idea.
When West decided to lead a spade, he did not expect to be on lead again, so he intelligently started with the jack. When this held the trick, he continued with a second spade to East’s king. East switched to a low heart, won, revealingly, with dummy’s queen.
Declarer next played a diamond to his queen, and could have succeeded now by cashing his hearts before continuing with diamonds. After taking his diamond and spade aces, East would have been endplayed to lead into dummy’s club tenace for the ninth trick. However, expecting that this line would set up too many winners for the defense, declarer decided to hope for a doubleton diamond ace. So he continued with a diamond to dummy’s king and then another diamond to East’s ace. East cashed the spade ace, but then had nothing left but clubs and hearts.
East could see that it was important now not to let declarer into his own hand. Covering all his bases, East shifted to the club king, and declarer had to go two down. Note that if he had instead played a low club, declarer would have won the trick with the jack, and he would have claimed the rest.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 2NT
Your partner's call of two diamonds is the fourth suit, a forcing inquiry. It asks you to show support for your partner, rebid no-trump with a stopper in the fourth suit, or to show extra shape in either of your two long suits. Here, your diamond stopper is more than sufficient for a call of two no-trump. For the record, a bid of three no-trump would have shown 15-17.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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