Hand of the day #690
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the...
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: ♠6
Today's contract of four hearts from the Yeh Tournament proved troublesome everywhere. Eric Kokish received a spade lead to the ace and a club shift. Kokish decided it was not yet Christmas. He rose with the ace and impressed his partner with the result. When trumps were 3-3, he had 620 and a 14-IMP gain when in the other room North-South overreached to five hearts and went down 300.
By contrast, when Eddy Manoppo played four hearts, he received a spade lead and spade continuation. He discarded a diamond, and Doron Yadlin won and played a third spade. With the lead in dummy, Eddy was not prepared to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. He finessed in clubs and finished up, if not wiser, at least better informed. That same successful defense was found by Prabhakar-Tendari against John Carroll.
Curiously, had the defenders shifted to diamonds at trick three, declarer would have put in the jack and ruffed away the ace, then played three rounds of trump. Now the defenders would legitimately have had to give dummy an entry, and South would have had no reason to be suspicious.
The happiest declarer at the end of the deal was undoubtedly Hiroki Yokoi. As South, he ended up in three no trump doubled after Geir Helgemo as East had opened one club. The defenders cleared spades, leaving declarer with only one possible winning club position, the singleton king offside. Today was his lucky day!
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♥7
My philosophy on blind leads against no-trump is to lead from length of more than five cards, but only lead from four-card suits if they look safe – or nothing else is attractive. Here a heart lead is plausible (I’d lead the seven rather than the three or five), but I might lead from Q-10-7-2 if that were a major rather than a minor.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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heart lead is automatic there, safe major lead vs 1nt - 3nt. However the advice to lead away from 5 card and longer suits is bad. It's actually known to be usually losing to lead from 6 card suits vs 3nt as partner more often than not has a singleton. When you lead against 3nt try to lead passive and try to lead partner's most likely suit. In the case of 1nt-3nt (if the bids could be trusted) you want to lead your shorter major as that's partner's very likely 4/5 card suit since dummy failed to use stayman it implies they do not have a 4 card major.