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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦Q
The winner of the Midweek Senior Swiss Teams Championship, Bernard Goldenfield, found a loser-on-loser play here, which produced an extremely satisfying result.
Against three hearts West led the diamond queen, taken in dummy by the ace. A heart to the king was captured with the ace and West returned his last diamond. On winning, East switched to a club. Suspecting from the bidding that this was a singleton and that West must hold six clubs to the king-jack, Bernard rose with his ace.
There are five potential losers; one in every suit and two in clubs. But as you can see, the defenders have no communications in any suit except diamonds, and that lifeline has already been cut.
Declarer drew the rest of the trumps and continued with a low spade to the queen and ace. East returned the spade 10, won by South’s king. A third spade went to the jack, West showing out. Had spades split, life would have been easy, but when they did not, Goldenfield played dummy’s last spade, on which he discarded a club from his hand.
Declarer by now had a complete count of East’s hand, and his club queen was poised to be jettisoned on East’s forced diamond return. The ruff and discard gave South his ninth trick.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♥
Following your responsive double, your partner's cue-bid simply shows a good hand. You have been asked to bid your suits up the line regardless of suit quality, so simply bid three hearts. The objective here is to find a 4-4 major-suit fit, not necessarily the best fit.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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