Taking the Right Finesse

[OliverC]

An interesting play problem cropped up on a hand I played with oktay yesterday:


NS Game, Dealer East

You are North and you and Partner have bid to 4 via the following bidding (Opps Silent)


Bidding
South      North
Pass             1
1NT⁽¹⁾          2 ⁽²⁾
2NT⁽³⁾          3 ⁽⁴⁾
4 ⁽⁵⁾          4
All Pass

(1) Spades
(2) Gamma in Spades
(3) No top honour (any length)
(4) Relay Beta (Weak Scale)
(5) 4 Controls (must be two Aces)

South (Dummy)
86542
73
A7
A982

North
AK9
KQJ6
QJ6
KJ10

This is a good contract any time the Spades are 3-2. 3NT is perhaps marginally superior, but the System prevented that because of my hideously expensive 4 response to Relay Beta.

East led the 10, which ran round to Declarer's King. okaty tried the AK of Spades, but West played the Queen on the first trick and then the 2 on the second. Now oktay played the Jack of Hearts, won by East's Ace, and East now cashed the Jack of Spades (West discarded another small Diamond) and then switched to the 4 of Diamonds. How do you plan the play from here?

oktay did well initially to go up with the Ace rather than trying to run it round to his Queen (West plays the 10), since West had the King. The question is how to play the Clubs. Nobody has yet played a Club. You can presume that West is likely to have the Club length, since it's looking like East is at least 4-4 in the Majors and probably didn't start with a Diamond shortage, or they might have led one at trick 1. Taking an immediate Club finesse against West (which is what oktay did) is a perfectly reasonable line to take, therefore.

There is a counter-argument that it's perhaps safer to cross to the King, and cash the Queen in order to discard Dummy's Diamond loser. Now the maximum you can go off is -1 (you still have a second Spade to lose, remember). oktay played a small Club from Dummy and inserted his Jack, losing to East's singleton Queen. That was 3 tricks lost and he still had the 10 and a Diamond to lose. -2 was not a great success.

No question that oktay was very unlucky here. Playing West for the Queen is certainly with the odds and there's no question that East did very well not to lead the Club Queen at trick 1 to try for a ruff (they'd be ruffing with a natural trump trick anyway and seeking a ruff in those circumstances is not normally a good idea).

Do you play safe for a maximum loss of -1 or risk -2 by playing with the odds? Difficult question.