Butchering Contracts

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The original heading was "Going Down". But that's not really what's at issue. Even aside from sac bids, any odds maven would tell you that if you never or even rarely go down, you're too tame and need to take a few more risks for the rewards awaiting you, rewards that make up for going down on reasonable contracts from time to time. To be more specific, a little slam that makes (or does not) on a 50-50 finesse is considered a reasonable bid by odds mavens. "Butchering" is a rather brutal term, but it's more descriptive of the point at issue here, which is kicking away very reasonable contracts where you shouldn't go down. I'm not talking about going the wrong way on a two-way finesse, or failing to drop a stiff king, or in any way choosing a line that doesn't work over another would have worked when there is no great disparity in the odds. I'm not talking about missing a double squeeze, nor even an elementary squeeze. (If I wanted to include elementary squeezes, they'd be about 12th or 15th in the listing.) I am solely referring to well-bid contracts that only await declarer's common sense and reasoning -- and don't get it.

There are countless easily worked out contracts that declarers manage to kick away -- not rarely, either of two lines of play would have worked, but neither is tried. So I decided to list the most frequent causes. I have perhaps 500 hands on this web page and without claiming a definitive survey, I'd like to offer my observations. Declarers go down for these reasons (given in order of decreasing frequency). I will give four examples of each point outside of the full category, four fairly easy but still representative examples.

A Failure to Count

Declining Natural and Necessary Finesses

The Fear Factor

Overlooking a Dummy Reversal

Cashing Top Winners too Soon

Fiddle-Faddling Around

Misguided Finesses

Failure to Draw Trump

A failure to take simple and clearly necessary finesses when dropping a stiff king is too improbable to contemplate, or dropping a doubleton queen is unlikely though not so improbable. Often, or so it seems, declarers get faked out of finesse for one of two reasons by the behavior of the defense: (1) a defender leads the suit, and (2) a defender declines to cover an honor. A declarer has to decide what finesses he absolutely needs, and those he can do without and those he should do without.

Fear of taking a risk early in the hand, or mid-way through maybe, but in any event, putting it off to the point where it's too late. I don't know how many of those I have come across, including one just included in

A lack of planning. To be sure, this doubles back to a failure to count. A declarer who hasn't counted out his winners probably isn't planning. Still there are other reasons for this separate category, such as cashing out one's best suit (presumably, I suspect, from the hope that they'll get a foolish discard) before getting down to the nitty-gritty of developing one's necessary winners.

Beyond those, other reasons come to mind, though as above, some of them tend to be covered by the top four. Carelessness and squandering of entries is perhaps next. "Development" and "Housekeeping" both involve a failure to attend to the necessary tasks one must do to bring that contract home. A disdain of the odds (I'm referring to basic, elementary odds, not the nitty-gritty) is often apparent. Relying on a mistake of the opposition rather than seeking out one's own potential. Not the sort of thing that pleases partners.