The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣J
Against four spades West's opening lead is the club jack. Sitting East, plan the defense.
You can build up a fairly good picture of the deal: declarer surely has five spades and either king-third or king-fourth of clubs. One possibility is to win the club ace and return a top club, playing partner for a singleton club. Now a diamond return will scuttle the contract, assuming declarer has two or more diamonds and one heart or more. If you are wrong about partner having a singleton club, though, declarer rates to be able to win the club king, draw trump, then set up hearts to pitch his diamond loser.
An alternative approach — one that is rather more likely to succeed — is to assume declarer has just three clubs. If so, the main threat on the deal from your perspective is those heart winners in dummy.
It is imperative that you dislodge dummy’s diamond ace before declarer knocks out your heart ace. At trick two, instead of playing for the club ruff, you must switch to the diamond king. If declarer ducks, then you must revert to clubs (rather than continuing with diamonds) and set up a second club trick. If declarer wins the diamond ace and plays a top heart, you will have to guess to duck.
Note that as the cards lie, a low-diamond shift at trick two is not sufficient. Declarer wins the queen in hand and draws trump, then establishes hearts for 11 tricks.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Depends on the partnership agreement
If you play this response as forcing and balanced, bid three no-trump. If you play the Jacoby two no-trump to show a game-forcing spade raise, then you are too good to sign off in four spades. Since new suits show shortage at the three-level, while four-level actions promise a 5-5 pattern, rebid three no-trump to show some extras with no shortage. Three spades would show a really good balanced hand.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
