Double Dummy 22
This is worth reporting. My hapless correspondent wanted to know where he went wrong in a 4H contract that everyone was making. Deep Finesse was there to prove that he should have made 4H like every other declarer, so where did he go wrong?
Board 13 from Friday 29/11/24
Dealer N All Vul
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Q743
QT86
943
42South is in 4H and West leads the ace of clubs and continues with a second club. How does declarer proceed from there? It looks like it all depends on the spade suit so the natural way to play it is to play the ace and then lead towards the queen. That is at least a 50% shot, would you agree? But Deep Finesse has another way: A low spade is led from hand, and if West follows with the two, the seven is played, won by East’s ten. Later, declarer enters dummy with a trump and leads the queen of spades, which if covered by the king, swallows up West’s doubleton jack! That may be a fun way to play it, but just how realistic is it?
As it happens, there were quite a few declarers across all of X-Clubs who ‘failed’ to make 4H. At least I can assure them that their playing technique is better than Deep Finesse’s. Unfortunately Deep Finesse has XRay vision which will always beat good play!
Footnote: How did so many ‘average’ declarers make 4H? It also helps if you have ‘average’ defence. After a competitive auction, with EW bidding lots of clubs, against 4H West started with the ace of clubs and switched to the jack of spades! Even Deep Finesse wasn’t needed after that!
