Finesses, Finesses, Finesses

	A J 10 5
	K 7 3
	Q J 4
	A 10 5
8 4		K Q 3 2
10 8 6 5 4		Q 9 2
3		8 7 2
9 8 7 4 3		Q 6 2
	9 7 6
	A J
	A K 10 9 6 5		Contract: 6 NT
	K J		Opening lead: ?

Finesses, finesses, finesses. All over the place. One in hearts, a two-way in clubs and a double in spades. On a diamond lead, you have your choice. Taking first the club and then the heart if the first loses offers the same odds as a double finesse in spades with one advantage, which is that you have some chance of getting 'em both right for an overtrick. On either a heart or club lead you've got the finesse you need (if you can count to twelve), whereas on a spade lead, you wouldn't have the luxury of being able to lose the first of those two finesses, and I could hardly blame anyone for starting the first half of a double hook in spades by ducking the lead. Or should declarer have been warned by the eight of spades lead, high spots traditionally showing "top of nothing"? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Five declarers went down in this contract, but if you think these five all went wrong on trusting to the double hook in spades, you'd be wrong. Incredibly enough, three of those five got a heart or club opening lead. The first defeated contract I looked at was played from the North hand above. On a low heart, declarer went to the ace of hearts and . . . He played the ace of hearts! I have no idea why anyone would play the ace of hearts there. The heart lead is a gift, allowing declarer to test the J finesse without losing the trick, meaning that if it's off, he's free to try another finesse -- either a finesse in clubs or a double hook in spades. But the jack wouldn't have been covered. And how many tricks did declarer start with? How many top tricks? Of course the answer is 11. Declarer needs just one card to be placed right and should certainly try the jack of hearts on that lead. After that trick, declarer ran 6 diamond tricks. I have often inveighed against running your strongest suit until you've done all the housekeeping you must, until you've established that 12th trick here. The problem with running an unbalanced suit is that you'll quite likely be throwing cards from the short hand that you'll dearly wish you had later. And the problem with running a balanced suit is that you often give up good communication between the hands.

So here, declarer sluffed two spades and a heart on the last three diamonds. At that point he "finessed" the J of spades into the queen, though he no longer had the 10! Whoa! I just noticed something else strange about his play. Finessing the J wasn't all that bad, for on taking the Q of hearts return with the K, declarer played the A of spades, dropping the K! His LHO had felt squeezed, evidently, and got down to K Q of spades, the Q of hearts and 3 clubs after trick 7. He could have afforded tossing the Q of hearts, which wasn't all that easy to see. He wouldn't have been thrown in since declarer had a blank A of spades at that point. Anyway, to cut to the chase, after declarer played the A of spades, dropping the K, his 9 of spades in dummy was high -- which he evidently didn't notice. He then went to the K of clubs and finessed the J into the Q. Ironically, the club suit was then blocked and had the jack held, declarer would have had no access to the ace of clubs and would have had to play the 9 of spades for his contract at what we may presume would have been a pleasant surprise. I'll hafta look and see if this is an advanced player.

A second declarer ducked a spade lead, took the diamond return, cashed another diamond, K of clubs, back to a diamond, then the J of clubs pushed through to the queen. I guess the odds are the same finessing in clubs or completing the double hook in spades. Again, it was the 8 of spades opening lead, and maybe declarer did heed the implications of that 8 and just happened to guess wrong in clubs. Can't carp about that.

Another declarer ducked a spade lead, ran six diamond tricks, sluffing a spade, a club and a diamond, cashed the K of clubs, dropping the Q, which did him no good because he'd sluffed a club himself, led the J of clubs to the A and cashed the A of spades getting nothing. His RHO had saved enough spades and the contract could not be made.

And then the two who got the 9 of clubs opening lead and went down! I had to check to see that this happened to two different people, and it sure did. The simplest of counts would have shown declarer 12 top winners. You don't even need to unblock the clubs. No wait a minute. The declarer who got the Q doesn't need to unblock, because of the 10. The one whose RHO went low, allowing him to win with the J, must unblock, and that is so necessary that it should come at trick two. However, lemme see what they did to go down: Well, one started out wrong by finessing into the Q of spades! Trick two. Hey, man, you've got 12 top tricks and plenty of communication between the hands. Why don't you take the heart finesse for a 13th winner? Instead, declarer took the club return and completed the double hook into the K of spades. This one can be critiqued since he had 12 top winners on that opening lead.

And lastly, the other declarer who got a club lead also completed the double hook in spades. Each of these two was down by trick 4, though they'd been given a favorable lead that allowed them to count to 12 and their contract.