Hand of the day #242
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff The old-fashioned textbooks tell you to lead k...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
In today’s deal you reach a comfortable small slam, and if playing teams or rubber bridge, you would probably claim 12 tricks and move on to the next deal. However, since you are playing matchpointed pairs, the overtrick might turn out to be of critical importance.
Opening Lead: ♥9
At pairs what matters is whether you beat the other pairs on any deal, not by how much you beat them. So if you play six spades and make it with an overtrick, you score a matchpoint at the expense of everyone who failed to make that overtrick and, equally, one matchpoint from everyone who missed slam or went down in a grand slam — no more, no less. The quantum of difference is irrelevant.
Here you have 12 top winners. You can arrange to ruff a club in dummy, but that is with the long trump, which does not generate an extra trick; so you must try something else.
Win the heart lead with the king and run six rounds of trump at once, pitching the diamond nine on the last. Then take the two heart winners, pitching a club from dummy, and cash the club ace. If the club jack is high, cash it. If not, lead to your diamond ace, cash the diamond king, and hope the diamond eight will be high.
If you look at the full deal, you will see that after the major-suit winners were cashed, East had to unguard one of the minors, so your squeeze would work.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♠
In competitive auctions of this sort, you must compete with extra trumps or side-suit shape, regardless of whether you are minimum in high cards or have a little to spare. Here, you know you have nine trumps between you and must therefore bid on to three spades. Your target is not so much to make three spades every time you bid it, as to make your opponents’ lives tougher — they’d do the same for you!
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
4 S
4s