Douglas43 Posted April 10, 2021 Report Share Posted April 10, 2021 This hand is from Lockdown League (rotated for convenience) and is an example of how listening to the bidding and thinking about the lead can help you plan the play.[hv=pc=n&s=s5hqjt865daqct942&n=saqj8hk974djt5c85&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=1sp2s3hp4hppp]266|200[/hv] South's overcall is not perfect but his longsuffering partner puts down a marvellous dummy. West leads the three of hearts to East's Ace. We have two clubs to lose, (we can trump the other two in dummy), so we either need to win the diamond finesse or the spade finesse. Which do we take? We already know that East has the Ace of hearts (probably bare, because most people avoid leading a singleton trump for fear of wrecking partner's trump holding). We can deduce that East has a high club honour. West was on lead and chose a "nothing" trump lead. There is an old saying that if you've been dealt AKQ of a suit its so you don't have a lead problem, and most of us would also lead from AK or AKJ, or KQJ. That means East almost certainly has the King of clubs (or maybe AJ). The Ace of hearts plus a top club would justify East's raise. That leaves West, who opened, with what? Say AQ or AQJ of clubs, no points in hearts. West needs both the King of spades and King of diamonds to justify a vulnerable opening bid. You refuse the diamond finesse and finesse the queen of spades instead, discarding your Queen of diamonds on the Ace of spades. The full hand is here: https://tinyurl.com/yk5og8t6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManxieRuth Posted April 10, 2021 Report Share Posted April 10, 2021 Thanks for this. The amount of information you have managed to extract from the bidding and the lead is very revealing. Clearly I need to work on this angle of the game. My finesses never seem to work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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