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: ♣9
When I collected the bronze medal at the 1994 Generali Individual, Wubbo de Boer (who was part of the Dutch team that had won the world championship a couple of years previously) was sitting South and received a club lead against his contract of four spades doubled.
He ruffed it, then realized that if he played a heart to the king, the defense could simply draw trump, and leave him with a probable second heart loser. So he guessed correctly to run the heart 10 around to East’s ace. Back came a second club, which he ruffed again.
Now if declarer plays on trumps, the defense can duck the first round. When they win the second trump and play a third club, the hearts are blocked. Declarer would have to ruff to get back to hand and would run out of trump. However, if South unblocks the hearts at once before playing the spade king, East wins his spade ace, leads a diamond to his partner, then gets a heart ruff.
De Boer saw the problems, and having gone to all those lengths to finesse in hearts at trick two, he now led the heart king from his hand, crashing the queen, then ruffed a heart with dummy’s spade king! Next he simply drew trump, having retained control of the hand, and could not be prevented from making 10 tricks.
It is psychologically very difficult to reverse your strategy in midhand as De Boer did, and even more difficult to find these plays at the table rather than in the post-mortem.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Depends on your agreements. 2♦/3♦/3NT
If you play inverted minors, where a simple raise is forcing for one round, this hand is duck soup. Equally, if you play a double raise as forcing, you will have no problems. If you play a simple raise is weak and a double raise invitational, then your choice is to invent a club suit or (my preference — inelegant as it might seem) to bid three no-trump and protect your major-suit honors.
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.
Heart jack should be in the West hand for the narrative to make any sense.