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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦5
The names have been omitted in today's deal to protect the guilty.
Against four spades West led his singleton diamond. Declarer won and played ace and a spade. West followed with the 10 on the first round, then won the queen and returned the heart three (conventionally, lowest from an odd number). Declarer won the ace and led a club to the king in dummy. The first mistake came when East won the ace, despite West’s echo to show an even number of clubs. East should know that declarer must have exactly three diamonds. Partner must have five hearts, giving declarer one heart. So, declarer must have exactly two clubs. Best defense is therefore simply to duck the first club, eliminating dummy’s entry to the clubs.
Now for mistake number two: East returned the diamond queen instead of a heart. Partner can’t possibly need a ruff, since he followed with the spade 10 and queen. Leading a heart would have clarified the situation for partner.
Declarer played the diamond king and now West trumped in, rather than waiting for a possibly useful discard from partner. When he exited with the heart queen rather than playing a club to break up the squeeze, declarer ruffed it and ran the trumps. This squeezed East between the club jack and his master diamond.
In the ending, declarer had to guess what to do in clubs, and he did — at least SOMEONE did something right on the deal!
Bid with the aces
Answer: 4♣
The first issue here is how high you want to push the opponents; the second is what you want partner to lead if East ends up declarer in a spade or diamond game, or even slam. You should get to the four-level as fast as possible to take away space from your opponents, and you want a club lead. A jump to four clubs should do the trick; it shows the heart fit and a club suit you are happy to have led.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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