Aces on Bridge

Today’s deal embodies a very simple principle, but it is worth emphasizing that there are many hands where declarer knows that one of his opponents is the danger hand, and one is the safe hand. In such instances, one wants to try to keep the danger hand off lead, and it may even be worthwhile to sacrifice a few percentage points in the play to ensure that you achieve your target.

Here, West leads a club against three no-trump. East takes dummy’s jack with the queen, then returns the suit, and West clears the clubs. Now declarer has just seven top tricks. He can finesse diamonds either way, and since East has short clubs and West long clubs, you would expect East to have the diamond queen. But the percentages are quite close, and if you play East for the diamond queen and are wrong, you are immediately sunk.

A better approach is to play the diamond king and then plan to run the diamond 10. Of course, as the cards lie, this approach is immediately successful. But had the diamond finesse lost, you would have been able to fall back on the heart finesse, giving yourself another 50-50 chance in addition to the first finesse.

This general approach of taking your chances in order, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, is called an echelon play. My experience is generally that the two chances are better than one.