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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♠J
Consider just the North and South hands today. You are declaring three no-trump, West leads the spade jack, and dummy's king wins the trick. How do you plan to make nine tricks?
You should call for the club five from dummy at trick two, intending to play the nine from hand. This is a plan that succeeds against all 3-2 club breaks as well as 4-1 divisions so long as the singleton is either the ace or the jack — and may do even better if the defenders slip. Suppose the full deal is as shown in the diagram.
When the club five is led at trick two East can do no better than play the club jack and return a spade. A second club is led to dummy’s king and East is fixed. The best he can do is to take his club ace and shift to a heart, holding declarer to nine tricks.
There are two traps to avoid. The first is coming to hand with a diamond to run the club eight. East will win the club jack and exit with a heart on the above lay-out. In this variation, West would win and shift to his remaining diamond, and the contract would collapse around your ears. The second trap to avoid is that you must not lead the club king at trick two. On this layout, East allows the king to hold, and you would never be able to establish any more tricks in the club suit.
Lead with the aces
Answer: Q♦
Dummy rates to be close to entryless. Which of the four suit-leads will give declarer a finesse he cannot take for himself? This is very close, but I'll go with the diamond lead because of the slim chance that repeated diamond leads might promote my heart 10 into an additional trump trick.
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.
