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
At the Olympiad tournament in Lille, Fredrik Nystrom demonstrated that he is not just an Olympic champion, but also an illusionist creating magic. But first, before looking at what happened, take the declarer's position to try to solve the problem.
You are in four hearts, neither of the opponents having interfered in the auction. You win West’s lead of the club six with the ace; East follows with the queen, indicating the jack, but not the king.
Your contract looks to be comfortable unless you lose three trump tricks. Since the easiest singleton to cope with is the queen with West, you play a trump to the king, but West wins with the ace and plays back the club four. You ruff away East’s jack and continue by playing the heart jack. You realize that you misguessed trumps when West follows suit and East wins the trick with the queen. East now cashes the diamond ace and returns the spade nine, which you win in dummy. Then what?
The declarer quite reasonably concluded that Nystrom had the singleton diamond ace. So instead of playing a diamond to try to get back to hand, he tried to cash the spade king and ruff a spade, hoping to reach his hand to pull the defenders’ last trump.
However, since Nystrom had his singleton in spades rather than diamonds, he could ruff the second spade and defeat the contract.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♠
In context you have three great features to your hand. Good diamond support and a working card in your partner's second suit, plus short spades. You might just jump to five diamonds, but maybe it is right as a passed (and thus limited) hand to bid three spades, then follow up with five diamonds.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
If you’re a BBO+ member, you can now play the Hand of the Day directly on BBO as part of your membership benefits.
Go to the BBO+ section, select BBO+ Games and Events, then click Play Today’s Deal to give it a try and compare your result with the players featured in the article.
