The Guardian, Wednesday 9 November 2005
An email from a reader poses this interesting question: “You and partner reach game contract in a major. Both opposition passed all along. You are delighted to know you have nine trump cards; however, the elusive queen is with the opposition. How do you decide to go for the drop or the finesse?”
The trump suit in four spades may look like this:
Dummy
KJ102
Declarer (you)
A9865
The legendary American Hal P Sims, a champion at many other sports besides bridge, was famed for his ability to guess which of his opponents held a crucial queen. He would rely primarily on what is called “table presence” (he was an excellent poker player in addition to his other talents). One day, some friends rigged a deal in which the trump suit was exactly as shown in the diagram above – but both opponents held a queen of spades! Sims won the opening lead and thought for some time. Finally, he exploded: “This is impossible – you’ve both got the queen!”
You can play off the ace and king, hoping that the queen will fall singleton or doubleton. Alternatively, you can cash one of the ace or king and – if the queen does not drop – finesse against it (lead low, hoping the holder of the queen will not play it for fear of losing it to the remaining higher card) on the second round of the suit. If you really do not have any clues, ace-king is the way to play – the queen will fall a little more than half the time, whereas a finesse is at best a 50% proposition. An old maxim is “eight ever, nine never”, which means that with eight cards between the two hands, you should “ever” finesse against a missing queen, but with nine you “never” should.
But it is rare that you never have any clues. Both opponents have passed throughout the auction – now, suppose that the opening leader kicks off with the ace, king and queen of a side suit. You trump the third round. Who has the queen of trumps? Probably not the opening leader, if he passed as dealer or failed to take some action at the one level. With an 11-point hand (or more), he might have done something in the bidding.
Perhaps the opening lead has been a risky one; you can judge that the opponent has led from an unguarded king or queen in a side suit (in bridge, suits other than trumps are called “side suits” or “plain suits”). Players don’t like making dangerous leads if they have safe ones available, and to many people the opening lead of a trump from a low doubleton will appear “safe”. Your opponent won’t ever lead from three trumps to the queen, though. So if he has made a risky lead, you should think about taking the trump finesse against him.
Extra TIP:
When evaluating your hand, then, I would recommend that you add about half a point for each ace you hold. You may find that this leads you to bid with what you regard at first as unbridled optimism. But those aces will work for you, and more often than not, your optimism will be justified.
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