aces on bridge

“To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.”

— Bertolt Brecht

I’m guessing many of my readers will be only slightly familiar with the concept of an intra-finesse.

Even straightforward finesses are not always easy. Intra-finesses can be quite complex, in that they are a combination of finessing followed by pinning a vulnerable doubleton, in a sense creating bricks with very little straw.

I’m sure today’s deal isn’t a record (maybe some reader with more time than me can find the minimum position for creating an extra trick), but the hand does feature an elegant example of the theme. It occurred in the Common Game, played all over North America.

The auction was revealing, in that declarer knew East had length in diamonds, so West had either a singleton or doubleton. Against three no-trump, West led a spade to the ace, and East returned his second spade.

Declarer won in hand, tried the diamond five and let it run to East, who won cheaply with the nine to return a top club. Declarer won the club in hand and now tried a diamond to the jack, queen and ace.

When a top club came back, declarer ducked; now East could do no better than play a diamond, allowing declarer to finesse. That got declarer up to eight tricks; he cashed the top club to find the bad break, confirming that he needed to find the heart queen to make his game.

Since East had shown only 11 HCP outside the heart suit, it was clearly the percentage line to play East for the heart queen, and the game duly came home.

ANSWER: Your partner has shown 22-24 or so. Your choice is to let him stew in two no-trump, to transfer to spades or — my choice — to use Stayman and then show your major-suit pattern. You can do this if you use Smolen, which I recommend, by bidding three of your four-card major over a threediamond response, showing 5-4 in the majors. This way, you transfer declarership if you locate a 5-3 fit.