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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣A
Against five spades West leads the club ace followed by the king, which you ruff. How do you plan to make 11 tricks when it is West who has the outstanding trump?
Can you do better than taking the diamond finesse?
A solution that wins whenever West has the heart ace is to crossruff hearts and clubs, coming back to hand with trumps as required. At trick nine, lead the heart king to West’s ace, discarding a diamond from table. West has to concede an extra trick no matter what he plays. If he plays a diamond, then you have two diamond tricks, and if he plays a club or a heart, you will throw a diamond from the table and ruff in hand with your last trump. After cashing the diamond ace, dummy’s two remaining trumps will be high.
However, as you expect West to have 10 cards in hearts and clubs, and thus at most two diamonds, the play that wins against any distribution is to ruff a heart, draw the trump in hand, ruff a heart, ruff dummy’s last club, ruff a third heart, cash the diamond ace, and ruff the fourth heart.
Next comes a diamond, and you put up the queen when East follows low. Here, West takes your queen with his king but has no safe exit card. Whether he exits with a club or a heart, you ruff in hand and discard dummy’s last diamond.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 1♠
It is reasonable to double to get both majors into play, but my choice would be to overcall one spade, planning to double or bid hearts at my next turn — if there is one — to get both my suits in, in the correct order. The problem with doubling is that if the opponents raise clubs, we might have to overbid considerably at our next turn to compete efficiently.
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.
