The Aces on Bridge: Monday, June 12th, 2017
by Bobby Wolff on
June 26th, 2017
In life as in a football game, the principle is: Hit the line hard.
Theodore Roosevelt
| W | North |
|---|---|
| Both | ♠ 10 4 ♥ A J 8 ♦ K J 2 ♣ A Q 6 5 2 |
| West | East |
|---|---|
| ♠ A 9 8 7 6 3 2 ♥ 7 4 ♦ A ♣ K 9 4 |
♠ Q ♥ Q 10 9 6 5 2 ♦ Q 8 4 3 ♣ J 8 |
| South |
|---|
| ♠ K J 5 ♥ K 3 ♦ 10 9 7 6 5 ♣ 10 7 3 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ♠ | Dbl. | Pass | |
| 1 NT | 2 ♠ | Dbl. | Pass |
| 3 NT | All pass |
♠7
Your partner’s double calls for a diamond lead. It sounds like he has four or more decent diamonds and a possible entry on the side. Your choice is whether to lead the low diamond or the jack. Since you appear to have two possible entries on the side I would lead the low diamond, just in case declarer has a singleton honor.
LEAD WITH THE ACES
| ♠ 9 8 2 ♥ Q 10 2 ♦ J 6 4 ♣ J 10 7 6 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ♦ | Pass | 1 ♥ | |
| Pass | 1 ♠ | Pass | 2 NT |
| Pass | 3 NT | Dbl. | All pass |
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Bridge-related
This week’s deals all come from the European Championships of 2016, held in Budapest, in the scenic setting of a football stadium. The crowds were somewhat smaller than might have been the case at a soccer game, but one cannot have everything.
Host nation Hungary were on Vugraph on day one, and were somewhat fortunate to escape with a small pick-up here instead of a large loss, when in one room Rumania bought the contract in two spades by West, down a trick.
Meanwhile, in the other room after the auction shown here, where North’s second double simply showed extras with no clear call, the Rumanian South took a flyer at three no-trump, and bought a very suitable lie of the cards for his choice. Gabor Winkler led a low spade, and declarer won in hand and played a diamond, won by West’s ace.
South took the third round of spades in hand, and led a diamond to the king, followed by the diamond jack …and East, who had started life with queen-fourth of diamonds, thoughtfully ducked it. That was curtains for declarer, when the heart finesse was wrong, since he no longer had enough entries to hand to establish diamonds. Of course with the sight of all four hands we would all have unblocked the diamond jack under the ace at trick two, wouldn’t we?
(For the record, declarer could have recovered by taking the club finesse when in hand with the second spade, but his actual play made perfect sense; it just didn’t work.)