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
One of the idioms you occasionally hear at the bridge table is “stripping a hand.” This refers to a process of eliminating some of the suits from a hand to reduce the options for a defender when he gets the lead. It may sound complex, but in today’s deal, Roselyn Teukolsky demonstrated a route to success by employing the technique perfectly.
Opening Lead: ♣A
Incidentally, note North’s three-spade bid, suggesting spade values and a better-than-minimum hand.
Against five diamonds West elected to lead the club ace — a small slip that allowed Teukolsky to make the contract by force, despite the unfavorable heart distribution. She ruffed the club continuation, played off three rounds of spades, ruffing the third, then crossed to a top trump in dummy to eliminate the clubs. At this point she finally drew the last trump, ending up in dummy. Now she led the heart nine, covered by East with the 10. Roselyn put on the jack, leaving West on play. A heart return would give up the defense’s trick there, and either black suit would allow declarer to throw a heart from dummy and crossruff the rest of the tricks.
Notice that on a passive spade opening lead, declarer will probably take the spade ace and lead the club queen from hand. If East is allowed to take this trick and play a heart through declarer, all the tension of the ending is broken up.
Bid with the aces
Answer: Pass
Although your values had suggested slam might have been in the offing, now, after the sign-off, passing discretely is best since you have no aces and no trump honors. If your partner cannot make a slam-try, you should respect his judgment.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
Thinking more, I suppose this assumes a style of including <GF hands in the opening...
"If your partner cannot make a slam-try, you should respect his judgment."
What if her judgement is simply that she has a minimum 2♣ opener? If you picture a few hands that match that description, slam looks great. 3♥ is consistent with one king or a singleton. You have three tricks. Partner forced to game opposite no tricks. Not making a move here is extremely wet.
Pass