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With finesse: without finesse!

After the excitement of two rather wild 6H contracts, we go for something a little more technical and a little…well, not much…lower as you are declarer in 6D! There has been no interference bidding after you started with a natural 1D. West leads C5. What’s your plan?

 

For some, the initial problem for North would be what to bid as one’s first response…a little too strong for a natural non-forcing 3. The best lie would be 2. It does not pay to lie about the length of major suits. Technically…and certainly the winning bid after that here from South would be 3, though South might feel their diamond suit is a bit weak for that. 3 would get North thinking of slam as surely their partner’s hcp would mainly be in the majors. If 4 is minorwood, that works, though cue-bidding is better when you are missing AK of a suit, or two suits!. Using 2 inverted minors where 2 is either 10+ or game force with diamonds (your choice) is an approach which would work much better here.

However, getting to 6 is one issue: making it is another. You have a potential loser in both majors. If the spade finesse loses, chances seem grim. However, we do not need to fall back on that yet.

We could take the club finesse at trick 1 and were it to work, we will be home. If it fails and East switches to a spade as seems likely, we would have to take the spade finesse as the chances of no heart loser are not great and our discard on the third round of clubs would surely be a heart.

Yet, it is always nicer if we can avoid taking any finesses. Let’s win and draw trumps. They fall very obligingly one in each hand. Then play your other high club and ruff dummy’s remaining club in your hand. Now play AK and if the Q comes down doubleton, you would have 12 tricks. No joy there.

Then exit a third heart. If East wins the trick, you will be down to taking that spade finesse…. but if West wins:

 

and declarer and dummy are just down to trumps and two spades each, West has the choice of giving declarer a ruff and discard or playing a spade into your AQ. Nice. Making when both black suit finesses fail and the Q being well protected. No finesse needed.

One player who is featured quite a bit this week is Blair Fisher and deservedly so as he and Liz are really successful at present. Blair had a different problem on this deal when his partner was George Masters as their auction started:

West                    North             East                South

                              Blair                                       George

                                                                              1

x   

1 was 16+ Big Club style. There then followed a game-force relay. Blair, North, got the diamonds in first and the final contract was 6 by North on the lead of 2 from East. Oh, that double? It showed both majors. Blair could see that despite the low spade lead, that the finesse was likely to fail. If it did, he would then be down to the unlikely situation of East having Q singleton or doubleton. He could do better than that.    

He rose with A, drew trumps and played three rounds of clubs, ruffing the third round in dummy. Then, he exited with Q.

Good news part 1 was that West won the trick. West may have feared the worst seeing AKx in dummy. They tried a low heart but Blair’s J scored the trick (good news part 2) and the slam was made, once more “without finesse”.

There are at times good reasons to interfere over a strong 1 auction. This time, it gave the declarer the clue he needed to make his contract. Otherwise, a spade lead from East is the most threatening lead to the contract, especially 2 where there is no indication that West holds the suit. East / West can be comforted by the fact that the slam could be made without taking any finesse and that Blair may well have taken that line even without knowledge of West’s shape.

Out of the 16 tables in play, 6 was bid six times and made just three times.

Richard Solomon

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