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For Junior, Intermediate and Novice Players…and others! It's Fri day. 

No “Practice” Finesse.

We love taking finesses…when they work! What? Yours always seem to fail? In that case, only take the ones you have to take. There is a name for one you take unnecessarily (the title of this article gives you a small clue as to that title) and this could be you if such a finesse fails!

 

So, take a look at these two nice hands, 34 hcp between them and you are in 6NT as South. West leads 4. How do you plan to make at least 12 tricks?

 

1NT showed 15-17 hcp. Without a long suit, you really need a combined 33 hcp to make 6NT  a good contract. North could only count 32 (17+ 15) if their partner was minimum for 1NT. So, they used what is called a “quantitative” 4NT call asking their partner to pass if they had a minimum 15 or bid 6NT with a maximum 17 (with 16, they would have to decide!). Here, South had 17, with a 5-card suit, too. So, 6NT became the final contract.

West’s diamond lead did not help South who always had 4 diamond tricks. They also had a guaranteed 3 spade tricks. What about the other 2 suits because they needed at least 12?

If the heart finesse worked, they would have 3 tricks in that suit. That’s 4+3+3. The AK would provide 2 more without risking a finesse. What though if the heart finesse failed? 4+3+2 is only 9 tricks. They would then need 3 club tricks…and to score three club tricks, they may well need to take 2 finesses, both the heart and then the club finesse. We all claim (rather inaccurately!) that most of our finesses fail. So, better only to take 1 rather than 2 finesses if you can.

Say you took the club finesse first (before the heart finesse). If that works and the suit breaks 3-2, you have 4 diamond, 3 spade and 5 club tricks which along with A makes 13 tricks. If the club finesse were to fail, you still have 12 tricks without taking the heart finesse. Only if there was a bad break in the club suit would you need to resort to the heart finesse.

So, you are much better taking the club finesse (you make your contract even if the finesse fails) than the heart finesse (you would need to take the club finesse if the heart finesse failed). Thus, taking the heart finesse at trick 2 is wrong, a likely unnecessary finesse, a “practice finesse”, taken for no other reason than “practice”.

The best play at trick 2 is therefore the club finesse, playing a high honour before you finesse). You can finesse either opponent because you have the J in one hand and the 10 in the other. As long as there is a 3-2 club break, you can lose to Q and make your contract by taking top tricks.

Today was a nice day because the heart finesse worked but that is only true half the time (yes, 50%, a much higher percentage than you seem to think!). These were the four hands:

 

 

Now, at a few tables, taking the heart finesse was not a practice finesse. That was where West found what for the defence was the very good lead of a small heart. Had South taken the A at trick 1 and then taken a losing club finesse, they would almost certainly lose two tricks, Q and then K. So, after that opening lead, South should take the heart finesse because even though they still needed to take the club finesse to come to 12 tricks, when the heart finesse worked, the only losing trick would be the Q should they finesse the wrong way.

So, when is an otherwise “practice finesse” not a “practice finesse”? When the opposition make a challenging lead as a few West players did here.

Ultimately, it is a question of counting how tricks you need to make your contract. Planning! Before you play to trick 1. Have you heard that before? Bet you have. Happy finessing..but only when you need to!

Richard Solomon

 

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