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A Reputation in Tatters.

They say “one success does not make a summer” or maybe they do not! Yes, I know, it was a swallow but there are no swallows playing bridge, to my knowledge! This, though, was a hard pill to swallow!

How do you rate your chances in the following 4 contract?

 

The first question you might ask is why partner, with more than a reasonable hold in the unbid suit, diamonds, chose to be dummy rather than declare 3NT. Well, they had 3 “wonderful” trumps and they knew I had at least 5. “You may need to ruff some clubs” they may have been thinking. Maybe, indeed!

There were other problems. Can you see any kings in the North-South hands? Plenty of queens and even some of those often overrated jacks. Yet, missing kings create problems. An ideal deal to teach beginners how to finesse.

Now, a mere hand or three earlier, partner had seen me land an awkward doubled game thanks to a couple of successful finesses. No squeezes or endplays there! They even complimented how good I seemed to be at finessing. Dangerous words.

So, West had led 5, low enough to be away from the king and yet high enough that it might be a singleton, too. Anyway, there seemed little point in rising with the ace. So, I played low, losing to East’s king. Back came a second diamond and West followed with 7. Comforting. Partner was right, though. I had to do something with potential club losers. So, at trick 3, a club was led from dummy to my queen and West’s king.

A third diamond was played by West and I had the pleasant choice of deciding what to discard from my own hand. I could throw an annoying small club which would mean taking a natural spade finesse or discard a spade and take the ruffing spade finesse because I would surely be unable to ruff two clubs in dummy successfully.

Two finesses had already failed. I could afford one more but not two. I had that uneasy feeling that whatever I chose would be wrong. I discarded a club and then played one of dummy’s huge trumps towards my Q. No joy there, losing to West’s K. West then played a spade…and it was now do or die. I, the contract and my reputation died!

 

Four finesses…one in each suit…four failed finesses. Maybe not a good example for the new players! East rubbed salt into my wound by playing a fourth diamond and I could not avoid another loser. You can tell me I should have discarded 10 on the third diamond or that I should simply have played a trump at trick 2. The defence did not have to play the third diamond. West could have switched to a spade and the fact they did not convinced me they held the K.

Wrong and my reputation lay in tatters. That knowledgeable little box by the deal on the hand-record told me I can make 4 on any lead. It knew which spade finesse to take. It was 50-50 between those making and failing in 4, which seems fair as in a vacuum (I seemed to be in one), the finesse is 50%!

So, I may abandon this gentle art of finessing and look for some other way to make my contracts…or were all my failures limited to one deal? Beware! Some, indeed many, successful finesses to come soon, I am sure...well, 50% sure. 

Richard Solomon

 

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