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At these forms of scoring you must give yourself every chance of making the contract. Before committing to the club finesse, you should therefore cash the two top diamonds, hoping to drop the queen. This increases your chances from 50% (for the club finesse alone) to 58%. At pairs you should cross to a diamond and take the club finesse, accepting defeat when it loses. Why is that? Because if you fail to drop the diamond queen in two rounds — which will happen 84% of the time — you will set up one more winner for the defenders to cash. If the club finesse subsequently loses you will go two down, instead of just one down. Such a consideration would matter little at rubber bridge, where the game bonus dwarfs the cost for an extra undertrick or two. Suppose now that dummy held only ace-king doubleton of diamonds. The chance of dropping a doubleton queen with seven cards out is appreciably less than when there are only six cards out. Even at rubber bridge scoring, you might decide to take the club finesse straight away, not willing to pay the price of possible extra undertricks. What would you say now?
There is not much point in bidding such a weak diamond suit. With an honour in every suit, I like a INT response best. Such a bid traditionally shows about 8-10 points. When you have this type of hand and only 6 or 7 points, you would respond ID instead, keeping the bidding lower. Switch the diamonds and the clubs and you would respond INT on 8-10, but raise to 2C with 6-7 points. Awards: INT - 10, ID - 8, 2C - 4. — Knight Features |
West
leads the five of spades to East’s ace and the three of spades is
returned. How would you play the hand at rubber bridge, or in a
teams-of-four match?
Answer
