Hand of the day #188
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff Both the defenders and declarers at the Dyspep...
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Defense has sometimes been described as the art of the possible. When you are playing teams or rubber bridge, overtricks tend to be irrelevant. You should try to picture a hand that will let you defeat the contract, and then go for it, no matter how unlikely it is.
Opening Lead: ♥K
Conversely, if you think you can set a contract easily, you should concentrate on covering the bases, defeating the contract even when declarer has a better or different hand than his expected one.
Defending today’s three spades, you lead the heart king and partner’s signal tells you he has four hearts. (It is a good idea to use count signals on the lead of a king in a bid and supported suit.) Should you cash a second top heart? Yes — declarer may (and today he will) pitch his second heart on a high club if you don’t take it at once.
It should then be apparent that three spades can be defeated only if East holds the spade ace or diamond ace. He cannot hold more than that for his pre-emptive raise — with as much as a limit raise, East would have jumped to two no-trump.
Thus, West should shift to his diamond jack at trick three. Careful defense from this point on, with West winning the first round of spades (and East steeling himself to duck his ace if a trump is led from dummy), will result in a diamond ruff from West to beat the contract.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 3♠
Your diamond rebid showed 12-14 and your second minor. (This sequence is not a reverse.) When partner invites game, you are certainly not minimum — but how to advance? The best way is to bid three spades, suggesting only three, since you would have bid the suit on the previous round with four. Let partner pick a game or partscore now.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
Why in the world would South open 1 club ? 1 diamond seems the natural opening bid.
I agree! In my opinion it's a mistake!
disagree 3s is confusing! withthe first dbl partner communicate 4s (with 5s he should bid 1s) so 3s is useless. My suggestion is 4d (invite to play 5d with maximum ie. 11-12pp) or pass!
I would pass, since responder negative dbl shows minimum 8pts.
yes but after on 2d he bid 3d so probably he has more points...