The Aces on Bridge: Friday, July 14th, 2017
by Bobby Wolff on
July 28th, 2017
Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour — we’re more like celery as a flavour.
Mike Myers
| E | North |
|---|---|
| N-S | ♠ 10 8 7 ♥ K 8 3 ♦ A J 10 6 ♣ Q 5 3 |
| West | East |
|---|---|
| ♠ A 6 2 ♥ A 7 4 ♦ Q 9 8 4 2 ♣ 9 6 |
♠ 9 4 ♥ Q J 10 9 6 2 ♦ 5 ♣ K J 7 2 |
| South |
|---|
| ♠ K Q J 5 3 ♥ 5 ♦ K 7 3 ♣ A 10 8 4 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 ♥ | |||
| 2 ♠ | 3 ♥ | 4 ♠ | All pass |
♥A
The jump to four clubs shows game-going values (approximately an opening bid) with real spade support and a singleton or possibly a void in clubs. You have a minimum in high cards and are not quite worth a Blackwood enquiry, since even facing two aces you cannot count 12 tricks. I’d cuebid four diamonds and hope partner can take control.
BID WITH THE ACES
| ♠ K Q J 5 3 ♥ 5 ♦ K 7 3 ♣ A 10 8 4 |
| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ♠ | Pass | 4 ♣ | Pass |
| ? |
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Bridge-related
Ben Zeidenberg is a Canadian who represented his country as a junior. Today’s deal came up in a world junior qualifying event, and it is the sort of example where it is easy to play too fast, and regret your haste later. At the table Ben had not been tipped off that this was a challenging deal, but he still found the right play when it really counted.
The contract of four spades had been reached after some optimistic bidding from Zeidenberg’s partner – but after all, what is new when you are a junior?
In four spades Ben received the lead of the heart ace, and West then accurately switched to a diamond. Dummy’s 10 won the trick, and Zeidenberg ran the spade 10 to the ace.
West gave his partner a diamond ruff, and on this trick Ben carefully unblocked the diamond king, a necessary move to set the stage for the marked finesse in diamonds. Now a second heart came back, won in dummy. Ben than ran all the trump, finishing in hand. As you can see, the thoughtful unblock in diamonds now allowed him to take the diamond finesse. He could therefore reach a three-card ending in which dummy had the king-eight of hearts and the club queen, while declarer had three clubs in hand. East, who had sole guard of both clubs and hearts, was forced to keep two hearts and thus come down to the singleton king of clubs, so declarer scored his club 10 at trick 13.