BRIDGE

West leads the five of spades against 3NT. How will you plan the play? You should play the spade queen from dummy since this is the only chance of making a trick with the card. The queen wins and you have seven top tricks. The best place to seek two extra tricks is the diamond suit but you cannot afford East, the danger hand, to win the lead. If you needed all five diamond tricks, you would cash the ace on the first round and then cross to your hand to finesse the jack. You would succeed when West held Q-x or Q-x-x. Here you need only four diamond tricks, so you can afford the safety play of cashing the ace and king on the first two rounds. The advantage of this is that you make the contract when East started with Q-x in diamonds. It does not cost you the contract when West started with Q-x-x or Q-x-x-x because you will still score the four diamond tricks you need. (When West holds Q-x-x-x you will cross to your hand to lead towards the diamond jack on the third round of the suit.) Suppose the spade queen had lost to East’s ace at Trick 1. How would you play the contract then? You would then hold up the spade king until the third round and finesse in diamonds to keep West (now the danger hand) off lead.