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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♣8
Transport yourself back in time, to play four spades, after an idiosyncratic auction, with 1954 Bermuda Bowl Champion Doug Steen in the East seat. West leads the club eight, which places East with the club ace and West with virtually all of the other high cards. You play low from dummy and Steen inserts the jack. Play on.
The original declarer drew trumps in three rounds and led a club to the king, which Steen allowed to win. When Steen took the third round of clubs he then carefully shifted to a diamond, allowing his partner to set up two winners in the suit. Declarer could not reach his hand except by overtaking the trump eight with the nine — and that would have exhausted his trumps. So he had to lose three tricks in the red suits; down one.
Did you spot declarer’s mistake? After drawing two rounds of trumps with the ace and queen, he should have thought back to the bidding. West appeared to have a doubleton club, as East did not try for a ruff, so West’s most likely shape was 2=5=4=2 (he would not leap to game on a 14 or 15 point 5332 shape). Thus, after the second round of trumps, declarer should have played on clubs. East could hold up the club ace until the third round, but the trump king would be the entry to the established clubs. On this approach, declarer would have made four trumps, a diamond, four clubs and a red-suit ruff.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♦
There are no good answers here. Partner has asked you to provide a spade stopper, club support, or show extra shape in your bid suits — but you have none of these. You could pretend the spade 10 was a spade stopper or that two small clubs represented support, but my choice would be to lie about having a fifth diamond and rebid three diamonds rather than repeat my hearts.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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