The Aces on Bridge: Tuesday, March 28th, 2017
by Bobby Wolff on
April 11th, 2017
(When asked why numbers are beautiful). It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.
Paul Erdos
| N | North |
|---|---|
| Both | ♠ K Q 8 7 ♥ A 8 3 ♦ A 10 5 2 ♣ 5 4 |
| West | East |
|---|---|
| ♠ A 5 4 ♥ K Q J 10 4 ♦ 8 ♣ K J 9 3 |
♠ 2 ♥ 9 7 6 2 ♦ Q J 9 7 6 ♣ 10 8 7 |
| South |
|---|
| ♠ J 10 9 6 3 ♥ 5 ♦ K 4 3 ♣ A Q 6 2 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ♦ | Pass | ||
| 1 ♠ | 2 ♥ | 2 ♠ | 3 ♥ |
| 4 ♠ | All pass |
♥K
It is far from clear where you should be going on this hand. But to start with, redouble to show your partner that you believe it is your side’s hand. You might make this call with rather less (take away the spade king for example) so you plan to follow up with an invitational sequence such as a jump to three hearts.
BID WITH THE ACES
| ♠ K Q 8 7 ♥ A 8 3 ♦ A 10 5 2 ♣ 5 4 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ♣ | 1 ♥ | Dbl. | |
| ? |
Subscribe to our feed
Bridge-related
In today’s deal, with a singleton, five trump, and apparently fitting cards, South should jump directly to four spades at his second turn after discovering his partner has opening values and spade support. A bid of three spades would be purely competitive and not a game try, while a double of three hearts would be a more balanced game try.
When dummy comes down, South can count just four tricks in side suits. He therefore needs to take six trump tricks. One way is to win four trumps in his own hand and ruff two cards in the dummy. Another way is to win three trumps in the dummy and to ruff three cards in his own hand. Either way will work perfectly well, so long as South avoids drawing trump prematurely. As is usual, when you want to ruff things, don’t draw trump.
The easiest route to the cross-ruff is to trump two of clubs in dummy. The first step is to win the opening lead and try the club finesse. West wins the club king and shifts to ace and another spade, since he can the see the looming threat.
South now leads a club to his ace, ruffs a club to dummy, then ruffs a heart, and ruffs another club. At this point South can afford to draw West’s last trump. He comes to his hand by ruffing another heart and leads out his last high trump. He has taken eight tricks, and can collect his side’s diamond winners to make his contract.