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: ♠4
Goldilocks heard the sounds of the bears arguing as they came back from the local duplicate, and as usual Papa Bear was defending himself against his wife's criticism.
While Goldilocks put the porridge on the table, she asked what was the cause of the fight, and the following hand was produced.
Three no-trump was the popular contract, and West led the fourth highest spade at every table. Where Papa Bear was declarer, he ducked the first spade in dummy. East won the king and returned the eight to the jack and queen. He ducked in dummy again and West carefully continued with the five, concealing the three. Now Papa Bear threw a club from hand and ran the diamonds, West pitching two clubs and a heart while East threw three clubs. Papa next played a club, and West cashed out for down one.
Mama Bear correctly remarked that East’s return of the spade eight made it highly likely that spades were originally 5-3, so that it would have been better to take the heart finesse instead of playing on clubs, while Papa insisted that this would simply have led to two down.
Goldilocks caught Baby Bear’s eye, and asked him how he had declared the hand.
He proudly responded: ‘I ran the diamonds, discarding a club from hand. When West pitched a heart, I cashed both hearts and would have shifted to clubs if no queen had appeared. That makes the contract unless West has the club ace and East the guarded heart queen.’
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♣
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.
Oops. Looks like another Bidding problems/commentary mismatch.