Aces on Bridge — Daily Columns

The Aces on Bridge: Friday, March 11th, 2016

It’s lies. It’s all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there.

Terry Pratchett


E North
E-W ♠ K 8 6 5 4
 K Q J 5
 A J
♣ Q 7
West East
♠ A 9
 10 3
 9 6 2
♣ A K J 10 4 2
♠ 10 3
 8 7 6 2
 10 7 5 4 3
♣ 9 3
South
♠ Q J 7 2
 A 9 4
 K Q 8
♣ 8 6 5
South West North East
      Pass
1 NT* Pass 2 ♣ Pass
2 ♠ Pass 4 ♠ All pass

*12-14

♣K

As a bridge player, there is a time and a place for optimism and pessimism. When declaring the hand, you want to be optimistic if you are in a poor contract: look for a lie of the cards that will allow you to make. Conversely when in a good contract, plan to counter what might go wrong, however unlikely.

The same logic applies to defense; put yourself in West’s shoes today to see what I mean. Having stayed silent at unfavorable vulnerability against a weak no-trump, since partner was a passed hand, you lead a top club and see a depressingly strong dummy.

The natural thing to do is to shift to a diamond, trying to set up a winner for your side, before declarer’s loser in that suit goes away. However, dummy’s values plus South’s weak no-trump, when added to your own values, suggest East does not have a solitary high-card point. He certainly cannot hold the diamond king, so this line of defense can never prevail.

Surely, the only hope to beat the game is to maneuver a trump winner. So play off the club ace and lead a third club. Declarer must use dummy’s spade king to ruff the third club. Declarer now plays a trump to his jack.

When you take this with the ace to play a fourth club, East can ruff in with the spade 10 to promote a defensive trump trick for your nine. And if partner has sacrificed his trump 10 on the first round of the suit, you can always find a new partner…


A simple call of two hearts here should be non-forcing, a jump to three hearts should be 5-5 invitational. To force to game, start with the call of two clubs. This is the New Minor forcing convention, which I recommend to everyone – one of the very few gadgets with little or no downside.

BID WITH THE ACES

♠ K 8 6 5 4
 K Q J 5
 A J
♣ Q 7
South West North East
    1 Pass
1 ♠ Pass 1 NT Pass
?      

For details of Bobby Wolff’s autobiography, The Lone Wolff, contact theLoneWolff@bridgeblogging.com. If you would like to contact Bobby Wolff, please leave a comment at this blog. Reproduced with permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc., Copyright 2016. If you are interested in reprinting The Aces on Bridge column, contact reprints@unitedmedia.com.


2 Comments

Real Estate KolkataMarch 29th, 2016 at 2:13 pm

4 million, below not only the adjacent home,
but most other homes in the area. Another thing to
have set up in advance is a good record keeping system.
You must remember that they are going to be dealing with large sums of money for you as
a good mortgage broker shall be handling every aspect
on your behalf apart from adding your signature to paperwork.

bobbywolffMarch 29th, 2016 at 4:40 pm

TO: Real Estate Kolkata

This is a contract bridge site, not a real estate site, so please do not place meaningless comments to our group!