Last Chance



A doubleton honor holds a special place in a discussion of covering an honor. And I would recommend a strong predilection for covering with a doubleton honor for a fairly obvious reason: If you don't cover, you've lost all flexibility on the next round and may find your honor picking up air. So -- unless you have positive reasons for not covering, which will be covered in a moment -- I would say that you'd probably do well to cover, to get something with your honor, rather than a low spot.
There are, of course, a couple of reasons for not covering with a doubleton honor. For instance, if declarer figures to have about 10 cards in a suit, you don't want to cover. Your partner would have a singleton, and you can't promote singletons. Further, it just might be a stiff ace or a stiff queen, in either of which cases, you would feel exceedingly embarrassed with a cover. There is also the not too far-fetched possibility that declarer, perhaps with 11 cards, will decline the finesse. Now suppose you see four cards in dummy opposite a promised five-card suit. Do you cover a queen not accompanied by a jack?
That one will have to remain in limbo where no one can advise ahead of time. You might be hoodwinked by a non-cover on occasion when your partner holds a jack doubleton. But then again, declarer could hold six trump in the closed hand and, as above, your partner might be looking at a stiff ace or queen. My own inclination would be to duck the cover if declarer has shown a powerful suit. But if it's his second suit, reducing the chances of a six-card suit? Then I might try a cover. But it's a touch-and-go situation. In any event, be careful of covering when your partner figures to be short in a suit.
Here's a situation where there would be no point to covering:
Q J 10
K 5

It probably won't matter when you play your king, but in any event, you'll get just as important a card on the second lead as on the first. The advantage of not covering immediately, particularly if declarer has no outside entries to this suit, is that declarer just might have an ace doubleton. If you cover the first round, declarer gets 3 winners. But if you hold off as long as possible, declarer only gets two winners in the suit.
But having said all that, I would now like to promote a strong predisposition to covering with a doubleton, lest you wind up spending your honor on air. Here is one I came across recently (and took up in a discussion of covering equal honors):
Q J 7 5
10 6 3 K 9
A 8 4 2

Playing on OKbridge with a stranger who identified himself as an expert, I chose to cover the queen of clubs, fully expecting that at the end of the hand, I would get a lesson about covering the first of equal honors, at which I would politely reply that I find it wise to do so with only a doubleton. As it turned out, however, my partner had just the holding that made the cover desirable and there was no lesson. Further, I held the 9, so my partner's 10 couldn't be finessed against. Had I not covered, declarer would have no reason to continue with the jack when missing the K, 10, 9 and would doubtless have picked up the whole suit for 4 tricks instead of two. And then, you can be sure, I would have been facing a lesson. (With adequate stoppers, he could have conceded a trick to the 9 or 10 and made clubs a 3-winner suit, but here he couldn't afford to lose the lead.)
Then one day the computer kicked out two instances where failure to cover with a doubleton honor cost a trick:
10 9 3
K 7 5 2 Q 8
A J 6 4

When East declines to cover the 10 of clubs, it rides to the king. Now on regaining the lead, declarer drops the queen and can win the next two rounds with the 9 and with the jack. Note what happens if East takes his moment to shine and covers. Declarer wins with the ace, goes to the 9, and West now has the K 7 sitting over the J 6.
Nor is it to be supposed that this is always a matter of covering the first of equal honors, which might be wrongly presumed from those two examples. Here was the second case spit out by the computer:
9
A 8 6 4 J 5
K Q 10 7 3 2

I led the 9 of hearts from dummy and thought I might as well push it through, which I did to the ace. Now when I regained the lead, I was able to draw the opponents' trump without further loss. Note what happens if East hops up and covers the nine! I cover, West wins and now his eight will be made good for fourth-round control.
The nine's not such a shabby card that East (or the programmer) should sneer at it, nor is it at all likely that holding onto the jack will bring in a trick, with three higher honors out. Surely the jack will get gobbled up soon enough without having any effect on the hand with a non-cover.
You might note that with two guards to the jack, it won't matter what East does if declarer is intent on pushing the 9 through (keeping declarer's holding constant, and thus reducing West's holding by one), and if East has three guards, covering would cost a trick, even if declarer does push the nine through.
Here is one last example from real life that gave me a certain satisfaction:
10 5
9 8 4 2 K 6
A Q J 7 3

I may have mentioned this in passing in the section on preference bidding. With 5-5 in the minors, I had bid diamonds and then clubs twice -- and found myself in four clubs opposite a doubleton when my partner had four diamonds! It should have been a miserable board for our side, but my RHO was on a level of play with that of my partner in bidding. I led the 10 of clubs, then another and found myself picking up the whole suit and just as many tricks as if we'd been in diamonds.
East evidently thought the 10 wasn't a good enough card for the king to conquer, and so spent it on the five. It should be evident that had East covered with that doubleton, had she been intent on getting something with it, her partner's nine would have been promoted and I would have gone down. There really wasn't much to lose. Looking at two doubletons, it's improbable that she'll bump into her partner's honors. Whatever holding I have, her partner will now have any cards he was dealt back of my holding. Of course, I might have had all I had along with the 9 myself. In that case, it wouldn't have done any good, but it's hard to see how on the bidding -- a second suit, where it's improbable that I'll more than five cards -- covering the 10 could do any harm.
You might note that if I had greater length and less strength -- A J x x x x, giving West Q 9 5 -- the non-cover allows one trick to the defense, the cover brings in two. So . . . a word to the wise . . .