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: ♥8
In today's deal West led the heart eight against four spades, and East took his ace, on which South false carded with the jack. East refrained from giving his partner an immediate ruff; that would be two tricks for the defense, but since his partner had one significant high card at most, they would get at most one diamond trick. He had to hope that the defense could get two diamond tricks at once, so the right defense was to play a diamond at the second trick.
So far so good, but East then considered that if he switched to a low diamond, South might not play the king. Might South duck — calculating that West had the diamond ace because wouldn’t East have given his partner an immediate ruff if he had an ace as a re entry? If South ducked, East would no longer have an entry for the heart ruff.
East decided that it must be better to shift to a high diamond first, thus remaining on lead if South were to duck. He then avoided the second trap, of leading the diamond queen. Had he done so, West might quite reasonably have led three rounds of the suit, trying to give his partner an overruff in that suit. Instead, East played the diamond 10, covered by the king and ace. West returned the diamond jack, and East overtook to give his partner the heart ruff.
“What took you so long to give me the ruff?” was all the thanks he got.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 5♣ or 5♥
If the opponents had not bid, the jump to four diamonds would have shown a hand with four hearts and six diamonds and the values to force to game. When the opponents intervene at a low level, I'd expect your partner to extrapolate from that agreement to the same point. You do not have to decide yet, though. Cue-bid five clubs — or jump to five hearts to ask partner to bid slam with a spade control.
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.
I would like to have same table settings than BBO.
Actually it is too small. Really annoying for me.
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