How to play a suit missing honours.

TomH
Hand 1, Wed 1st July

Board 1 has 4 interesting features, which lead to varied successes.

All N-S pairs were in a H or S game with 26 points. 9, 10 or 11 tricks resulted.

The hand has4 possible losers; 2 spades, 1 heart and 1 club.

  1. Normally 4-4 fits are much better than 5-3 fits. Not in this case. Can you see why?
  2. The different leads made no difference to the result. An unusual outcome.
  3. The heart holding; A1086 opposite KJ73 means the QH finesse can be taken either way, so understandably half will guess wrong. For those who tried to drop the QH by playing AH then KH, also failed, which statistically is an inferior line of play when holding only 8 trumps.

  4. The spade holding; Q105 opposite A6432 missing K, J, 9 means the best line of play to keep losers to 1, is to play AS first, then a small spade up to the Q10. Missing those two honours, finessing the QS is not a sound strategy.

    The correct H finesse and smart S play keeps losers to 2.

    2 declarers kept made 11 tricks. How would you fair?