In bridge, irrespective of the end result, what matters most is how you approach the game specially in the making of the contract bid. There are endless facets of card play at bridge with a host of alternate lines available so much so that it sometimes becomes a bit confusing to choose the line that would safeguard your contract with the best result possible.
It is here that bridge player, vary their play, each according to his mental skill and adaptability to the need of the moment. Those who have the vision, anticipation of adversity in the cards, both foresight and hindsight come out as winners more often than no and are hence classified to be skilfully good bridge players compared with those who play on instinct and routine without giving the adversity of card serious thought.
Of course some plays in bridge are routine without much fuss or deep thought required, as for example if you require just 2 tricks from a holding of AQX opposite XXX, it is routine play to take the finesse of the queen. But a player of vision and foresight would look into all the aspects of the bidding and defence counting points, marking distributional break of suits and the affordability of safety play vis-à-vis the contract bid. And if he feels he can afford to give up a trick in the suit given above, he can make the standard safety play of playing to the ace first and then coming back in another suit to lead towards the queen. For you see if the king is on the left, the queen is going to score anyway. If not, it makes no difference whether you finesse first or not. But here too, if you plan length in that suit on your left, the safety play of the ace first has a distinct advantage as it might well get the singleton king on the right quashed under it. Thus a good declarer keeps all his options open putting on his thinking cap and following the odds percentage table of break of suits.
Today's, problem is of such foresight and anticipation required in table play. Place yourself in the south seat and try to work out the best line of play in accordance with the percentage break of suits catering to the making of your contract of 5C bid as under on the following hand:
The opening lead is the heart eight. Take it from there well, what are your prospects in the making of 5C? Counting, your losers you can see 1 in spade and 1 in diamond. But there is more to it than meets the eye. For you see you need to plan carefully in approaching your play of the hand. There are endless options open. You can plan to place the ace of spade favourably and get 2 spade discards after knocking out the trumps in 3 rounds. These would cater to 3 trump tricks plus 2 trumps if clubs break normally 3-2 giving you 5 trump tricks, 2 spades, 2 red aces for a total of 9 only. From where will the 10th come? Alternately if you ruff out 2 hearts, it will give you 2 spades, one heart, one diamond, 2 heart ruff and 4 clubs in hand. But for that you need entries and fluidity in communication between the two hands. The real question that needs immediate resolve is which hand do you plan to make the master hand? This is a vital question and one that should be an integral part of your overall approach to the play of the hand. For as the cards lie, you can foresee that clubs are not breaking normally with west holding 4. In choosing which hand has the long handle to survive, you need hindsight and vision to conjure up the tricks required.
Let us for the moment see how play can progress in the first few rounds. Taking east's queen with the ace of hearts, declarer leads his singleton spade. Suppose west takes ace and continues hearts. You ruff in dummy with 9C and plan to play 2 trump tricks hoping for a normal club break 3-2 so that if the spades don't break 3-3, you can easily ruff one spade in hand and get to dummy with the last trump to run the spades and make the contract. But as you can see neither the clubs are breaking favourably nor the spades.
It is here that good declarer scores with a master. Stroke whereas his weaker average counter part would fail on the above line. Can you spot the winning line - yes, when west plays the second heart, you must not ruff in dummy to shorten the trumps. For the dummy is going to be the master hand if the spades are to run. The hand is full of losers and it is only logical to make a dummy reversal for spades are almost established and need just one ruff in hand so when you discard a loser on loser - diamond from dummy you are in fact not losing at all. East winning KH, is now helpless on any return - diamond heart or club, your JH is good leading to dummy with club and one spade ruff to ensure the 5C contract. All that was needed was to choose the long hand and then play.
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North West East South
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KQ10742 A3 J985 6
5 87642 KQ103 AJ9
J6 72 KQ109 A9543
QJ109 8754 6 AK32
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The bidding:
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North West South East
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1D P 1S P
2C P 3C P
3NT P 4S P
5C ALL PASS
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