Aces on Bridge — Daily Columns

The Aces on Bridge: Tuesday, October 27th, 2020


2 Comments

Mircea GiurgeuNovember 10th, 2020 at 3:03 pm

Hi Bobby,

IMO, this was a very lucky deal for Jill (and her partner). Cards couldn’t be friendlier to them. I’m assuming the opponents were playing Journalist leads.

Also, assuming standard carding, how should East signal at trick 1?

bobbywolffNovember 10th, 2020 at 4:26 pm

Hi Mircea,

While my opinion would not call Jill very lucky, but rather about medium with good fortune (club king is off side, but the normal suit to lead, and although hearts were perfect, both spades and diamonds neither 3-3 but 4-2, although the spade honors were onside).

Yes a Journalist lead in clubs, 10 from KJ10 and then, after a somewhat clever duck from Jill, induced a club continuation which, because of West misreading his partner’s four, likely thought that he started with Q94 and didn’t want to part with the nine (thinking the nine might be valuable to save rather than to “waste” it at trick one).

Sometimes specific holdings on defense signal differently when worried about the “right” signal losing a defensive trick one way or the other, either the cards value or it being better off to be saved.

However, remember the very old time commercial, “Ask the man who owns one” to then ask East why, who then may hedge in his answer, due to their defense making a mistake.