BECKER BRIDGE

Assume you're declarer at four spades and West leads a club. How would you play the hand?

If you finesse the queen of clubs, which seems the natural thing to do, East wins with the king and shifts to the king of hearts, forcing out your ace. This leaves you in bad shape, and you eventually go down one, losing two hearts, a diamond and a club.

You could dismiss the result by attributing it to bad luck -- after all, West could have had the king of clubs. But if you study the situation objectively, you should conclude that the club finesse is the wrong play. This is because you have a much better chance to make the contract by playing the ace of clubs at trick one and a low diamond at trick two! In the actual deal, you'd eventually wind up with 10 tricks.

The best the enemy could do would be to win the diamond, cash the king of clubs and shift to a heart. You win, lead a diamond to the ace, ruff a diamond high, play the A-K of trumps and ruff another diamond high. After leading a trump to the jack, you discard a heart on the established ten of diamonds to make your game.

By playing this way, you make the contract if the trumps are divided 2-2 or 3-1 (90 percent) and the diamonds are divided 3-3 or 4-2 (84 percent). These divisions occur much more often than those where West is dealt the king of clubs (50 percent), so it is clear that the club finesse should not be risked.

Observe also that you must lead a low diamond from dummy at trick two, not the ace. If you play the ace first, you'll wind up down one. If you don't believe it, just try it and see what happens.