The trick taking ability in bridge is not everyone's forte. It is acquired by good declarers over a period of time by sheer hard work at acquiring the habit of visualizing the possible distribution and key cards of the opponents and then concentrating enough to see the best alternate out of the many available.
Some suits are so tempting for a finesse including a deep one that many find hard to resist and they so succumb to it on the sheer tantalising cards available. But there is in bridge a right time to take a finesse and a right time to avoid it altogether. It all depends upon the essential requirement for the making of the contract and the risk involved in taking such a finesse.
There are however no hard and fast rules as every hand in bridge has its own requirement and nothing universal can apply successfully to each and every hand. This is what makes the game of bridge so interesting and lively. For every hand is a challenge for the declarer who tries his best to meet his set target. How one particular declarer differs from another depends upon how much depth of vision, logic and foresight one has. Many a time one is struck by a blind spot and fails to take the only sensible, logical line of wining declarer plan to make his contract which otherwise is deemed to be ice cold.
There are endless ways to play a particular hand depending upon the declarer's calibre and vision to understand and comprehend what is required and then finding the one line of play that offers maximum security in making his contract safe and foolproof from breaking.
Today's hand is one wherein the declarer needs to find what is best for him and then to check out a step wise route to the achievement of his Goals. True, unforeseen factors can crop in easily making him change his path but a good declarer is one who even while deviating from his original plan, still ensures that there is a safety cover on his course of action which will ultimately steer him out of the troubled waters if any.
Today's hand is a test in finding your safety spot in the making of the contract. Let me give the north-south hand and place you in the south seat to test your skill as a declarer in a contract of 6H bid as under:
On the following: The opening lead is the spade 9. When the dummy comes down, you are pretty pleased with the opening lead for it has already given you a free finesse and resolved your problem by eliminating your losers outside the trump suit. So in a way this is really not a problem hand at all for thanks to the opening lead half your worries are over. All that is now required is how you handle the trump suit so to confine your loser to a maximum of 1 trick.
This has now boiled down to a basic safely play handling in a suit combination of 3 in dummy against 6 in hand headed by the AQ10, which can tempt you to take any finesse you deem fit. Let us look at our safety notions in bridge before touching upon our handling of the trump suit.
Suppose you had a suit of AK863 in dummy opposite 1052 in hand and you could afford to lose only one trick, needing 4 tricks out of the five. What would be your best alternates, if on the AH, east drops the jack? Well, if you think east has QJ doubleton, you can score all the tricks by laying down the KH. But what if east has the singleton JH, this would be a losing play for then it would give west holding Q9XX 2 certain heart tricks. What then is the safety play needed at the point of time when east drops the JH on your AH? Yes - you guessed it right. All that you need to do is to play small heart from dummy at trick 3. If east blanks out, the 10D forces the queen from west. But now south is poised to pin west's 9D under dummy's K8 to take all the tricks. This willingness to concede a trick is the standard safety play that is needed. Coming back to our problem at hand do we take the finesse of 10H, or the QH or playing the AH directly?
Here the safety play requirement calls for a different variant. For you see you need only one trick and cannot afford to give away two. Suppose south takes the finesse of QH which say loses to the king and then eventually is back contemplating whether west started with the singleton K or doubleton KJ? Putting south to a guess again is not good bridge.
But the safety play could have rid south from all guesses, by simply cashing the ace of trumps first. Now when you return to dummy and lead another heart all you need is to cover whatever. East plays automatically confining your loser to only 1 trick in trumps, even if east holds KJX or KJXX. Of course if west held KJX, or KJXX, you had no chance anyway. So play safe and enjoy.
=================================
South West North East
=================================
1H P 2NTP
3C P 3H P
6H ALL PASS
=================================
=================================
North South
=================================
QJ10 A6
642 AQ10873
AQJ5 8
KJ9 AQ87
=================================
Comments
Comments are closed.