HandsWest Bridgford Bridge Club

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Interesting Hands - #4. Maximising the number of tricks

The following hand occurred in a league match, leading to a contract of 6NT. It is a good hand to concentrate declarer’s mind on how to plan the play. The auction is not important.

Dummy
	ª	K 7
	©t	A 10
	¨	A K 6 4 3
	§	Q J 9 8

Declarer
	ª	A J 5 2
	©t	Q J 8
	¨	J 7
	§	A K 10 6

When playing any hand declarer should always have a plan of how to make the contract. This is based upon the number of top tricks, the number of inescapable losers and how to promote other tricks - (for example by ruffing or setting up a long suit). Sometimes we have some help because we can make deductions from the bidding or because of the cards led by the defence; we can also make use of our knowledge of how cards are LIKELY to be distributed.

If we count ‘top tricks’ on the hand above then there are 2 spades, 1 heart, 2 diamonds and 4 clubs - a total of 9. Where do the remaining 3 tricks come from?

If the spade finesse works then we have an extra trick, and similarly we can make an extra trick if the heart finesse works, (there are 2 tricks even if it does not work) but we are still a trick short. The only possible source of the 12th trick is the diamond suit. In fact the diamond suit could provide us with 4 tricks rather than 2 - in which case we only need EITHER the heart finesse OR the spade finesse to work, (instead of both).

Statistically the chances of a finesse working are 50%, however if we need TWO finesses to work then there is only a 25% chance that they will do so. So the key to this hand is to try and make 4 diamond tricks and then we can decide which of the major suit finesses to try.

The defenders have 6 diamonds between them - if the suit is 3-3 then we always make 4 tricks. However when 6 cards are missing 48% of the time they will be 4-2 whereas they will only be 3-3 for 36% of the time. Because we are missing Q-10-9-8 then there is a danger of losing 2 diamonds. To maximise the number of tricks with just J x in hand and A K x x x in dummy (or vice versa) then the correct play is to start the suit by playing SMALL from the long hand towards the Jack. In this way any time that the Queen is with the right hand defender the Jack will make and we have increased the chances of making 4 tricks in the suit since this play always caters for a 3-3 break as well as half of the 4-2 distributions.

[Note that in this case we are talking about making tricks in a No Trump contract, we would not necessarily play the suit in this way if playing in a suit contract.

Lessons

As Declarer ALWAYS have a plan of how you are going to make your contract. Spend a moment or two thinking about this when dummy goes down
When we have 6 cards missing in a suit then they are more likely to be 4-2 rather than 3-3
If playing in NT then to increase the number of tricks we take in a suit when missing one of the top honours it is often a good idea to lead towards the small honour in the hope that the missing card will appear first

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