Contract Bridge

Bridge is in large part a game of rules, but it also offers great opportunity for innovation. While general rules might suffice in most situations, a player must also be willing to abandon a rule when common sense dictates that he do so.

For example, assume you’re declarer at four hearts on this deal and West leads the king of spades. How would you proceed?

To begin with, even before you make a play from dummy, you should assess your overall prospects. You conclude that it’s possible to lose four tricks — a spade, a heart and two clubs. Granted, you’d have to be unlucky to make less than ten tricks, but since it’s possible, you start looking for a way to prevent this from happening.

You begin by allowing West’s king to hold the first trick. This assures that East will never gain the lead in spades, a move that can do you no harm and might eventually do you some good.

West continues with a spade to your ace, whereupon you cross to dummy with a diamond and lead the queen of hearts, on which East produces the seven. The question now is whether it’s better to finesse or play the ace.

Normally, when missing only the K-x of a suit, you should play the ace. Mathematically, the two missing cards will be divided 1-1 about 52 percent of the time.

But the correct play in the present case is the deuce. The reason is a very good one: If the finesse wins, you are sure to score 11 tricks, while if it loses, you can’t make less than 10. But if you don’t finesse, you might — and in the actual deal would — go down one.