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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣4
At the San Francisco Nationals, the Mitchell Open Board-a-Match Teams winners (a form of scoring akin to pairs, but played by teams) were Michael Becker, Aubrey Strul, Steve Garner, Howard Weinstein, Walid Elahmady and Tarek Sadek. They gained a win on this deal from the final session, when Garner executed an elegant trump-reduction play.
Both Souths were in four hearts, and the play started identically. West led a low club, and East took the trick and returned a club. West won, cashed the diamond ace, and continued with another diamond. Each declarer inserted dummy’s jack and ruffed away East’s queen.
Against Sadek and Elahmady, South now played a heart to dummy’s queen and a heart to his ace, but had to finish down one when trumps broke badly. By contrast Garner realized that he could pick up four hearts to the jack in the East hand as long as he reduced his trump length to the same as East’s. So declarer first cashed his heart ace, then played a heart to dummy’s queen.
If everyone had followed suit, Garner would have led a spade to his ace, drawn the missing trump, and claimed. But when West discarded, declarer played the diamond king from the dummy, East and South both pitching spades.
Now declarer carefully ruffed a diamond, cashed his high club, and led a spade to dummy’s king. South next played dummy’s high diamond and was able to win the last three tricks, whatever East did, to make his contract.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♠4
I am sure everybody will lead a major here — both minor suits are unattractively dangerous. But no one really knows if it is right to lead a fourth-highest spade or to try to hit your partner with a heart lead. If I had a safe three-card lead (say 9-8-third) in hearts I would go for that. But leading from this heart suit is by no means safe, so I will lead a spade as my preferred route.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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