LEARNING CENTER

Don't finesse. Here you count losers from your hand: no spade losers, one heart loser, one possible diamond loser, and one club loser. You can take a finesse to get rid of your diamond loser, but that's a 50% chance (even less when we stare at the 10). Instead, draw trump and plan on using your spades to get rid of the extra diamond.

Don't take a finesse. Instead, play three rounds of clubs, ruffing the last round. Now play the AK and a third diamond. your opponents will be on lead with you holding:

Whichever opponent is on lead will either give you a free finesse or give you a ruff and a sluff.

Spade finesse. Here the West hand is the dangerous hand, you if you lose a trick, you'd like to lose to East. If the finesse fails, and RHO leads a club should you finesse this time? Yes! You only have 8 tricks (4 spades, 1 heart, 2 diamonds and a club) you will need one of the finesses to work, but if you take the club finesse first, you won't get a chance to try spades.

The full deal:

	Dummy  AQJ63  82  A98  J43
K8  J9743  J76  K76		1052  KQ6  Q10432  98
	Declarer  974  A107  K5  AQ1052

Other. You do have 8 tricks, and a spade finesse could get you the 9th, but it's only 50-50. If you attack clubs instead, you can set up two tricks. On a spade finesse, your opponents can either set up diamonds or, on some layouts, attack spades, as in the example below.

The full deal:

	Dummy  753  AQJ6  AK5  987
KJ109  54  J10943  A6		82  10872  872  K532
	Declarer  AQ64  K93  Q6  QJ104

Finesse. No one likes to go down in a slam at trick one, but here your opponents have found the only lead that may beat your contract. On another lead, you would be cold as long as trump don't split 4-0 as you would draw trump and throw away two spades from dummy on your long diamonds. Here, missing the A, you can't draw trump so someone will ruff your good diamond leaving you no choice. I can't bear to show the full deal. Let's say that the finesse wins.