Opatija 2015: Put Yourself to the Test IV

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4th World Youth Open Championships Official Site 

Opatija, Croatia • 20 – 29 August 2015

In 8 of the Opatija 2015 World Youth Championships daily bulletins were posted a series of bridge problems called: Put Yourself to the Test, where you could trie to solve two or three questions, and you could find the answers only a few pages after.

Click Here  to read the Championship Daily Bulletines

We will be posting the excelente series…one per day, remember that they are designed for the championships participants.

Bulletin 5

Lead:

You hold:
aaWhat would you lead?


Play: aa

 


Think the answers 

and afterwards

Read the answers belowwwww

Lead:

You hold:
aaWhat would you lead?

Typically, you would choose the five of spades, but in this case, when South is presumably planning on running dummy’s diamond suit, you should start with a high heart. This might be the full deal:aa

Yes, East might have acted, but that is not the point!


Play: aa

You only have six top tricks, so you really need to develop your diamonds. But if you play the nine of diamonds to the ten and East helds the queen, he will win the trick and now a spade return would be fatal: West may have the ace of clubs and be able to cash his good spades. On the other hand, ducking the lead or leading clubs first would lose your club entry to dummy.

So you need to cash the ace and king of diamonds. Then you play the jack of diamonds. If East wins with the queen of diamonds, you discard the king of spades! You will be able to play clubs in order to remove the ace of clubs (to reach the diamonds), because dummy’s ten of spades stops that suit