The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♦K
All the deals this week come from one of the world's most enjoyable tournaments. It is the Yeh Bros. invitational teams and pairs, run by Chen Yeh, a fine player who was on the first Asian team to win a gold medal at bridge in a world championship.
The format is unique: Mister Yeh sponsors top teams from around the world to play, but everyone is welcome to pay. The event has high entry fees and extremely generous prizes, and the only condition of contest is that Mister Yeh’s team is exempt to the knockout (last 16) stage of the teams and the final of the pairs. That way he gets to play against the strongest players in the world.
In today’s deal Bob Scott and John Wignall defended four hearts in this deal from last year’s pairs qualifier. Scott led a top diamond, as Wignall discouraged. Now Scott observed that, with only 16 HCP missing, it would be too much to ask partner to have a natural trick from high cards here. A club shift, while attractive on the surface, could achieve nothing. So what was the least he could find partner with to beat the game?
Scott found the answer when he led three rounds of diamonds, then hopped up with the heart ace at his first turn and played the fourth diamond for Wignall to ruff in with the precious heart 10, promoting the heart nine to the setting trick.
Lead with the aces
Answer: ♥10
Both at pairs and at teams on "blind" auctions — where the opponents have reached no-trump without bidding any suits — your objective is to lead from a long suit of five cards or more. But when you are balanced, you should try not to give away tricks. Therefore, I much prefer leading the heart 10, not a fourth-highest spade (and leading from ace-fourth at no-trump is always a very ugly lead).
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
