Hoping for the best
Unlike chess, bridge is not a game played with perfect information. That is, not everything is known to the players making decisions. When we bridge players take a finesse we posit the position of the opponent's cards and form our best strategy. OK, we hope for the best. As we thrash about in this soup of uncertainty we usually try to resolve ambiguities as early as possible for many reasons; we may adopt a different plan later depending on the outcome of our early try, more practically, the opponents may be unaware of their best strategy and not take advantage of what is a reverse for us.
But sometimes we have to live with uncertainty a little longer; plan the play as west here;
| ♠ K9 | ♠ AJ43 | ||||||
| ♥ 42 | ♥ AKQ75 | ||||||
| ♦ AK75432 | ♦ 9 | ||||||
| ♣ K4 | ♣ A82 | ||||||
Partner bids strongly, your high cards carry you to 6NT and you receive the lead of a low heart. Winning that you set about the diamonds from the top but north discards a club on the second round, what now?
Suddenly this has become an uphill struggle. With only nine top tricks you'll need the two long hearts and the spade finesse. If you're saying "what must be, must be" and immediately set out to discover your fate by playing a spade to the knave, then hold on a minute. There is more than one way to play spades, if you need the queen to be in north, then it will still be there later on. The first thing to try is the hearts. You can pitch diamonds from hand without problem.
But north turns up to have started with four to the ten. So give him a trick - he hasn't any diamonds to cash. You can win the club return, the other top club and play the long heart here:
| ♠ Q105 | |||||||
| ♥ --- | |||||||
| ♦ --- | |||||||
| ♣ J7 | |||||||
| ♠ K9 | ♠ AJ43 | ||||||
| ♥ --- | ♥ 7 | ||||||
| ♦ 754 | ♦ --- | ||||||
| ♣ --- | ♣ --- | ||||||
| ♠ 8762 | |||||||
| ♥ --- | |||||||
| ♦ Q | |||||||
| ♣ --- | |||||||
What does poor south discard on the last heart? It has to be a precious spade otherwise west's diamonds would all be good. Only now does declarer take the spade finesse and when that works, the lowly four takes trick thirteen. If you take the spade finesse any earlier you ruin the timing for the squeeze.
Published Saturday 19.Jan.2008