From                   6th May, 2009, Board 27

                                          Difficulty            * * *

You are required to make 10 tricks in order to justify your optimistic bidding.  Here’s how the play starts:

            ♦J won by your King

            Diamond won by East’s Ace

            Trump shift ducked to West’s Ten

            Club to Dummy’s Ace

            Spade finesse

            ♠A is cashed (West pitching a Diamond)

At this point the defense has two tricks and will also score the ♥A.  How do you avoid losing a second Heart?

SOLUTION

Maybe the Clubs will come in, that would certainly solve the problem.  But taking an immediate Club finesse is putting all of your eggs in one basket.  So you play a Club to Dummy (just in case there is a doubleton Queen lurking out there).  The Queen does not drop, so now you play the ♣J from the board.  East plays low without a care in the world and you sensibly ruff that.  Alas, West shows out, and now it is all down to the Heart suit.

What is the enemy distribution?  Let’s start with Diamonds.  East has shown enough HCP for a 1♦ overcall and as he didn’t make one we can presume that he has less than five Diamonds.  How many Diamonds does West have?  Probably less than six as there was no Weak Two opening.  So let’s give West five Diamonds and East four.  If you trust that logic then you have a complete count on the hand!  West obviously started out with 2=4=5=2 distribution and that’s bad news!  With Hearts 4-2 there no point in finessing against West’s hoped-for Jack, as West (if he has that card) will cover and the defense will eventually score their second Heart trick (on the 4^th round of the suit).

So, you don’t finesse against West for the ♥J, instead you play East to have the doubleton Jack.  Good choice, as this is the entire deal:

Declarer did a few right things here:

-         She exited a Diamond at Trick 2 in order to get a favorable return

-         She counted out the enemy distribution by considering the bids which were not made

-         She combined her chances in Hearts and Clubs instead of staking everything on the Club finesse.

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