What can we learn, if anything, from this deal, which tells us that Deep Finesse can make 4S EW but not 4H! So, what’s the difference? When you see the deal for Board 5 you’ll see little difference between the hearts and spades: both have a 5-3 fit but there appear to be two heart losers and only one spade loser. Yet, DF says EW can make 4H but not 4S. Let’s see if we can work out why, then, 4H makes but not 4S.
Board 5 from Wednesday 14/02/24
Dealer N NS Vul
Without going through all the permutations in the play, the answer seems to be that you cannot avoid two heart losers but, if hearts, the ‘weaker’ suit is trumps, it may be possible to avoid any spade losers by engineering the play so that North has to open the spade suit up and hence not make either the queen or jack.
I will leave it to the reader to go through the double dummy play to see if my guess is on the mark, and if it is, maybe we should always make it a rule, in such situations, to choose the suit with more certain losers to be the trump suit!
QJ7
QT9
KQ9
A952