The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff

Declarer looked beyond the obvious when playing this heart slam. Unfortunately, he did not look far enough, and the slam failed.

Opening Lead:  ♠Q

Declarer appreciated that the obvious route to 12 tricks was to find the club king with East, and dummy’s trumps provided the necessary two entries to repeat the finesse. But South saw another possibility — that he could give up a diamond trick in exchange for generating two extra winners — in which case he would not need the club finesse at all, since there would then be two discards for the queen and jack of clubs.

For this to be so, the most likely lie of the diamonds would be the king in West’s hand, with the jack due to fall in three rounds. So, declarer cashed the heart ace, then followed with ace and another diamond. West took the king, and when the jack dropped doubleton from East, followed with a third diamond. East ruffed and South overruffed, but now only one club discard was available. With the club king offside, down went the slam.

Declarer was on the right track, but failed to allow for the diamond jack being doubleton with East. The way home is, at trick three, to lead the diamond seven toward the queen — without first cashing the ace. West cannot afford to duck, but now a diamond return can do no harm. After South draws trump ending in dummy, both of his losing clubs can be offloaded on dummy’s good diamonds.

Bid with the aces

This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.

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