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Finesse and Care.

The following board required both of the above for one declarer. Firstly, though, would you have let that player be declarer had you held the following South hand?

 

1NT was 12-14 and after a standard Stayman bid from West, North entered the fray showing the minors. What action would you take as South?

The South hand has a mixture of good and not so good in playing a contract, presumably in diamonds. While 5 diamonds look really good with that suit as trumps, those spade cards look extremely useful in defence, less helpful for playing a high-level diamond contract. So, South contented themselves with 4. West emerged with a take-out double which brought 4 from East. South elected to pass and there matters rested.

On many days, that might prove to be the right action by South though this was not one of them. South did indeed have three defensive tricks though their partner could not provide one:

 

 

10 lead gave East their first successful finesse and East was very soon to take their second one, in trumps. However, they were still not home. A careless A would have left them with 3 spade and a diamond loser.

East did well leading a low spade off dummy. When North showed out, they played Q with South winning K. South played A and a second diamond with a second spade from the East hand ensuring that declarer only had two spade losers and a very handy +620.

A rather fortunate making game but nevertheless it required careful play to take advantage of the successful finesses. Ironically, 4 by East can be beaten but not 4! Had South led any low spade, presumably J, North ruffs even if East plays low from dummy. A diamond return is followed by K on which A has to be played and South can await a certain natural spade trick to beat the game. Maybe North could have doubled suggesting an unusual lead to 4?

4 needs the same careful spade play we saw above as well as two successful finesses.

With North declarer in 5 , the defence must also be careful as were East to start off by cashing both aces, declarer only needs to make a correct trump guess to make 11 tricks. A spade lead should also allow one of the heart losers to be discarded though North cannot then do better than one down even with a correct trump guess.

Fortunately for the defence, it is very likely that South will declare 5. West should start with Q. South does best to duck forcing East to be on lead when a second heart is played. Now 6 gives declarer a trump guess. If they are unsuccessful, they should be down 3, a good result for East-West if doubled.

We have already seen the difficulty in making 4 of either major. Insurance is quite useful for South with a 10-card diamond fit but that “insurance” could cost 500 when game in a major is rather speculative. Defending 4 proved expensive for North-South this time, perhaps a little unluckily.

The board produced a large variety of results from the 24 tables with 4, 4 and 5(x) all making though the most common result was 5x being defeated by one, two or three tricks….lots of big swings in a Teams’ competition.

Richard Solomon

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