Bridge

Opening lead — king of spades.

There are some decisions you must make at the bridge table where you can’t be sure you’re right. That is the nature of the game, and all that can be done in these cases is to exercise your best judgment and hope everything turns out all right.

Take this deal where you’re in four hearts and West cashes the K-Q of spades, on which East plays the 4-8. West shifts to the club deuce, and you follow low from dummy, losing to the king. Back comes the nine of spades, which you trump as West follows with the three. The only problem remaining is to avoid a trump loser. Normally you’d play the A-K, hoping to catch the queen on the first or second round.

Granting that that’s what you usually do with nine cards of a suit missing the queen, playing for the drop is something you should always think about twice.

Sometimes it is right to abandon the so-called percentage play in favour of a finesse, and in this case, you should do a bit more investigating before deciding what to do.

Accordingly, after playing a trump to the ace, you cash the A-K of diamonds and ruff a diamond, on which East’s queen falls. When you now lead a second trump and East follows low, you are faced with the crucial decision.

West almost surely started with the AK-Q-3 of spades, given East’s failure to play high-low on the first two tricks and West’s discontinuing the suit after the second trick. The clubs appear to be divided 4-4, judging from West’s fourthbest lead of the deuce.

Finally, since East seems to have started with three diamonds to the queen, it follows that his original distribution was 3-3-3-4, making the trump finesse likely to win. Maybe you shouldn’t bet the old family homestead on it, but the finesse has now become the percentage play.