Bookworm Bridge Conundrums #61
This conundrum was written by Barbara Seagram's and was originally published in ...
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: ♠2
This week's deals come from the event in Beijing.
Our first deal features a double-game swing in the match between China and Hungary. Would you open one spade as East or make a one-spade overcall as West? When the Hungarians were East-West, both passed at their first opportunity. North responded one no-trump to the one-diamond opening, East cuebid two diamonds to show the majors, and Harangozo now jumped to four spades over South’s three-diamond call to end the auction. He was not taxed to come to 10 tricks since, after the one-no-trump response, he could not misguess the spade suit.
In the other room the auction was as shown. It takes a heart lead and a heart ruff (or a heart switch after the unlikely lead of the club ace) to defeat five diamonds. Even after West led a spade, however, Peter Trenka had to play well to land the doubled contract.
He ruffed the opening lead, pulled trump, then led a club to the king and ace. He ruffed the spade return, discarded a heart on the fourth round of clubs, and called for a low heart. With a count on the West hand, declarer knew his only chance was to find him with a singleton heart queen. There were no more entries to dummy, so it would not have helped to find East with both missing heart honors. Declarer therefore put up the heart king and was rewarded when the queen fell. He lost just two tricks for plus 750.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♦
Your partner has shown a strong hand with both minors and implicitly short hearts, so your cards appear to be working overtime. The choice is to give preference to three diamonds (which sounds like three-card support since you did not raise at your previous turn) or to raise to four clubs. I prefer the first option.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.
