The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦10
Whenever you play a small slam with no top losers but only 11 winners, one of your first thoughts will be to construct an endplay to force an opponent to give you a 12th trick. Sometimes the idea is to build a trick from the intermediates, rather than just going for an endplay.
Here, South plays in six hearts after a transfer auction in which North’s excellent trumps and aces argue for driving to slam. When the diamond 10 is led to the ace, declarer should cash two high trumps, then strip off the diamonds. Next he leads the spade two to the ace, then advances the spade nine from dummy, planning to play low if East does the same.
Should West win the trick, he is endplayed to give you two tricks in spades or to lead a club into your tenace. If East covers your spade nine with his jack, you win the trick and plan to ruff a spade in dummy, hoping to bring down the spade queen, as would happen here.
If the spade queen does not put in an appearance on the third round of the suit, you will come back to hand in trumps and lead the fourth spade, planning to discard a club from dummy if West produces the master spade. At that point the defense would be endplayed to lead clubs or give you a ruff-sluff. Finally, if all else fails, you can take the club finesse.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♣ Lead
Declarer surely rates to have quite a lot of shape but not much in high cards, given his failure to act over one club. It seems unlikely that a trump lead will allow you to prevent a crossruff, and since your heart queen might allow you to overruff declarer in spades, I'd settle for the club lead as least likely to cost a trick.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
