Vil on 26WED
It's quite amazing how the very first board I look at often shows up something of value and interest. Here we have something that should be basic bidding, and also basic from a play point of view but, judging by the results, I suspect none of the fundamental principles were followed in practice.
Board 1 Dealer N Nil Vul
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K43
AKQ9
K52
A92The bidding should be simple enough. With 19 HCP there is no need to open any more than ONE of your longest suit, so North should open 1H. South responds 1S and now North shows the full value and balanced nature of the hand by jumping to 3NT. That should be simple enough.
East follows normal practice by leading 'fourth highest of longest and strongest', there not appearing to be any good reason to do otherwise, and leads the SEVEN OF CLUBS. West of course plays the queen and now it is up to declarer.
When a suit is wide open if you win the first trick, it is sensible practice to NOT win the first trick, or even the second if the suit is continued (I am talking about a NO TRUMP contract here), so North should duck the first two rounds and win the third. By ducking, declarer hopes that the COMMUNICATION between the hand that wins the next trick for the defence and the hand with the long, and by then good, clubs, will be disrupted. As you can see it is West who has the ace of spades and no more clubs. Declarer should also take care to ensure that EAST, the hand with the good clubs, does not gain the lead, so the proper play is to lead a spade from dummy and put up the king, and when the king holds, lead the three and put in dummy's TEN for a finesse. That is not guaranteed to work, but if East did not win the ace when declarer put up the king, then East clearly did not have it, so the only sensible play for declarer is to finesse the ten.
If you view the hand records and the “Deep Finesse” analysis you will see that it says that declarer can in fact make FOUR. I have often said that one should NOT take Deep Finesse as gospel because the ONLY way declarer can make four is to play in a very risky way. Can you see why? I will leave you to work that one out, but if you can see why a GOOD declarer should make THREE exactly, then that is great. If you can see how Deep Finesse makes four, that is even better. But best if you can see why the Deep Finesse line is quite stupid in normal circumstances. You are then on the way to being a very good bridge player!
