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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♥7
Bob Hamman was among the few to bid and make five diamonds in today's deal from the Olympiad in Lille.
You receive the lead of the heart seven, fourth highest or second from a bad suit, and if you had to play the hearts for no loser, the right play would be the nine. But here you may not need to make that desperate a move; finessing the queen leaves more tension in the ending, whether East covers or not.
East covers the queen with the king, reinforcing your opinion that the heart 10 is likely to be wrong. You advance a high diamond and are delighted to see the diamond jack falling from East, giving you an extra entry to dummy. Better still, the defenders play back a club instead of a major. Time to take advantage of their generosity!
You win the club, lead to the diamond nine to ruff a club, then cross over to the heart jack, eschewing the finesse. When you ruff out the third club and exit with a heart, you endplay North to lead a black suit and take care of your spade loser.
Had the defenders continued with a heart at trick three, you would have needed to rise with the jack and bring East under pressure by running all the trumps.
On the even more challenging spade shift at trick three, you would have had to rise with the ace to squeeze East — not easy, but maybe the indicated line?
Bid with the aces
Answer: Double
This hand is at the lower end of the range for a penalty double that suggests your side has the balance of the high cards, so it typically shows at least 9 HCP. Your balanced hand pattern may make it somewhat unlikely that you have a big penalty coming, but then again, why shouldn't partner have extras?
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.
You together have a minimum of say 12+9=21 but maybe a little more so tell partner you have8/9 points by doubling and await partners next bid