Test your play BRIDGE

1. Many players think that if declarer were allowed to see all four hands, he

would always score the maximum number of tricks possible. However, there are cases where declarer would find such a task very difficult, and here is one of them.

You are South, diamonds are trump, and East leads the jack of hearts. How would you score four of the last five tricks in this position? 4

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Q764

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Answer to No. 1: Ruff the heart jack with the four and overruff it with dummy’s five. Then trump a club with the six and lead the four of spades.

West’s remaining three cards are the J-10-8 of trump. If he ruffs with the eight, you overruff with the nine. If he ruffs with the ten, you discard dummy’s last club and again have West over a barrel. Either way, your mission is accomplished.

You are South, declarer at Seven Spades, and have no losers in hearts, diamonds or clubs. Your only problem is that you have the K-J-9-8-6-5 of trump facing dummy’s A-10-7. When you lead the five of trump to the ace, West produces the deuce and East the three. When you next lead dummy’s ten, East produces the four. Do you play the king or finesse?

Answer to No.2: In the absence of any clues indicating otherwise, you should play the king. With the opponents holding Q-x-x-x in the suit, East will be dealt x-x in 20.35 deals out of 100 and Q-x-x in 18.65 deals out of 100.

The proper percentage play, therefore, is to go up with the king because it is slightly more likely to be the winning play. This is simply another way of expressing the oftquoted adage “eight ever, nine never.”

However, as noted above, the theoretical advantage of playing to drop the queen rather than finesse is only very slight.

Any clue that might indicate that West is somewhat more likely to have been dealt a

singleton than a doubleton should induce you to finesse rather than play for the queen to fall.

Tomorrow: A double squeeze.