Independent on Saturday

NEIL HAYWARD BRIDGE

Contract: 6♥ by South.

Opening Lead: ♦T. How do you secure 12 tricks?

Recommended Line: A little learning is a dangerous thing, they always say. This hand confirms those sentiments. A declarer who has been taught the odds knows a finesse is a 50% shot. With more learning, that apparently obvious statement will be known to be inaccurate in certain cases. But that’s for another day. With more learning, your average declarer will believe that, if success depends on one of two finesses working in your favour, your success rate is a touch above 75%. That is pretty much correct. So, in the case of this hand, finesses might be tried in both spades and clubs. If both fail, declarer goes down. Probably with an irate forefinger punching a table of statistics to emphasise how the universe conspires against selected victims. But this hand allows you to thwart the malice there might be in the universe. You win the first trick, draw trumps, cash a second diamond, and you then play two top clubs, followed by the ♣J. Your opponents are about to deliver a twelfth trick via a spade lead or a ruff and discard. A 100% line is just so much better.

THE XFILES

en-za

2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://independentonsaturday.pressreader.com/article/282248078750256

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