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: ♦Q
Most Souths reached three no-trump in this deal, but many missed a simple point in the play, there being a right and a wrong way to maximize the possibilities in hearts.
West led the diamond queen against the no-trump game, and you realize that playing on clubs would be too slow because the defense would almost always come to three tricks in the suit, plus at least two diamonds.
Therefore, you have to go after hearts, and since you have six top winners in spades and diamonds, you need three heart tricks for the contract. The simple finesse of the jack works half the time, but if it fails, you will be doomed in the absence of an unlikely squeeze. Contrast leading a heart to the nine — also a 50 percent chance, since East will hold the 10 half the time. If it loses, one defender or the other will have started with queen-third a third of the time. The combination of the chances gives you a two-thirds chance of success.
One more trap: You cannot afford to duck the opening diamond lead because if the heart finesse fails, there may be five tricks immediately available to the defense via three clubs and one trick in each red suit. So win the opening lead with the diamond king in dummy and finesse the heart nine. The finesse loses to the 10, but with East holding queen-third of hearts, there will be nine tricks for the taking when you regain the lead.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♦
If ever there was an eight-count that cried out for balancing action at the three-level, this is it. You have weak length in a suit that the opponents have bid and raised, and as a result you can confidently expect partner to be short in hearts and (since partner did not bid spades) to have reasonable length in diamonds. For the record, your partner's shape rates to be close to 4-1-3-5.
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.
