ACES ON BRIDGE

This week’s deals revolve around the ruffing finesse: How to play them and how to defend against them. When a high card is led through you as a defender, and your lefthand-opponent is known to be void, several factors can affect whether it is right to cover or not.

In our first deal, South takes a shot at four hearts when his partner shows the majors. He wins the diamond king lead in dummy and, knowing the club ace is offside, must play to set up spades for three discards. Unless West holds precisely ace-queen-doubleton, that requires a ruffing finesse against East’s queen.

Declarer calls for a spade to his king. West takes his ace and presses on with diamonds, forcing the dummy. When declarer calls for the spade jack, East must decline to cover. Doing so would allow declarer to ruff, draw trumps ending in dummy and cash the spades for three discards. When East instead plays small, declarer has no way home.

South can discard, then draw two rounds of trumps, hoping for an even split. But when that does not come to pass, he has little choice but to revert to spades. On the next ruffing finesse, East ducks again, and West cannot be prevented from ruffing in and cashing the club ace for one down.

The reason for not covering here is to prevent declarer from establishing his long suit safely. Also, West had to force the dummy in diamonds to extract its late entry. Otherwise, declarer could draw trumps, then ruff out spades at his leisure.