The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣J
Today's deal sees a truly challenging missed opportunity from a Gold Coast Pairs final.
Against Kelvin Ng’s contract of four hearts (reached after a limited one-heart opening) Barbara Travis led a club. Ng won in hand and led a spade, guessing successfully to put in dummy’s jack when Travis played low. Howard Melbourne won his ace and returned the club queen to dummy’s ace. Ng now unblocked dummy’s diamonds and cashed the spade king to pitch a club from hand, then led a spade to cross back to hand. On this trick Melbourne discarded his club, and declarer ruffed with the heart three, a play he would later regret. Now declarer cashed the diamond ace to discard dummy’s club, and led out a high trump. Travis took her ace and could lead her club to let Melbourne overruff dummy, then exit with a diamond.
Declarer had no choice but to ruff in hand, and was unable to overruff in dummy. Thus he could no longer take the trump finesse. So he lost a third trump trick for down one. To make the contract, declarer had needed to ruff the third spade with his heart seven, leaving himself with the heart three at the critical moment, so he could ruff low in hand and overruff in dummy at trick 11.
An easier line would have been to win the club lead in dummy to cash the diamonds and play a second club at once, planning to pitch dummy’s third club and ruff a club.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Pass
There should rarely be any temptation to act over a no-trump opening (whatever the range) in direct seat, with a balanced hand. When you have a good lead against no-trump, bid only on hands with some extra shape. In balancing seat you might protect with two spades if the vulnerability encouraged action (since you cannot guarantee the spade lead in time). But it is certainly not mandatory.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
