You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥K
If you bid them up, you have to play them up, and today's deal strongly emphasizes this point. Peter Rank and Alex Kolesnik played in the Ventura Halloween Regional before coming to the San Francisco nationals. The following deal, from a knockout match, demonstrates that it pays to have confidence in your partner.
After Rank’s jump to five spades, Kolesnik decided that he had four useful cards for a partner who rated to have 6-5 distribution, so he went to the grand slam directly.
Against the grand slam, West led the heart king, taken by Rank in dummy (as he discarded a diamond from hand). He drew trump in three rounds, noting that West had started with two. He then worked on clubs, hoping to get a count if something revealing came to light. The club king was followed by a club to the ace, West showing out. Rank ruffed a club back to hand and stopped to assess the situation.
West was marked with two spades and one club and was likely to have begun with six hearts (since he might have overcalled three hearts with seven of them). That left him with four diamonds, so Rank played with the odds and took the first-round finesse by running the diamond 10 through West. When it held, he could claim 13 tricks for an 11-IMP gain since the opponents were in six spades at the other table.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Pass
Had East simply raised to two diamonds, you would of course have bid two hearts, an action that suggests a balanced opening bid with no real extras, but promises four hearts. Here, though, you cannot compete to three hearts on a hand where in a noncompetitive auction you would have been content with a call of one heart. You can let your opponents force you to bid one level higher than you want — but not two.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
If you’re a BBO+ member, you can now play the Hand of the Day directly on BBO as part of your membership benefits.
Go to the BBO+ section, select BBO+ Games and Events, then click Play Today’s Deal to give it a try and compare your result with the players featured in the article.
