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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Opening Lead: ♥J

Compare what happened in this deal from the first round of Vanderbilt tournament, when a top-seeded team met a less highly ranked squad.

At the first table, where the expert was declarer, the heart jack lead went to declarer’s king. East held up the club ace twice, West discarding a small diamond. Now, instead of playing a third club and giving East the chance to shift to spades, declarer cashed his red-suit winners and took his nine tricks.

In the other room South also opened two no-trump and was raised to three no-trump. West led the heart jack to declarer’s ace, and declarer then played the club king, West playing the five. How did the expert East defend?

East could see that he would never beat this contract unless his partner had good spades. Since one of the red queens in dummy was sure to be an entry to the clubs, the holdup in clubs was never going to be that effective.

Accordingly, East decided to break the rules and win the first club (in case it was declarer’s ninth trick, as could easily have been the case if declarer had five diamonds). Now he switched to spades, and — more importantly — he covered the possibility that his partner had the ace and jack of spades by shifting to the spade queen.

Declarer was helpless now; whatever he did, the defenders had four spade winners.

Bid with the aces

This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.

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