Bridge | 23 May 2013

Before deciding how to tackle a hand, experts don’t just weigh up the odds; they also size up the opponents. That’s why, whenever I present the likes of Zia Mahmood or Andrew Robson with a declarer problem, the first question they ask is: ‘Who am I playing?’ Needless to say, weak opponents are far less likely to have ducked a trick or played a false-card.

And so it was that when I gave the star England player David Gold this declarer problem, which had come up the previous evening, he wanted to know: ‘How good is my right-hand opponent, and how good is my left?’

The ♠10 is led. You play low. East wins with the ♠K and returns a spade to dummy’s ♠A. You now play a low diamond from dummy towards the ♦J, and it holds the trick. You continue with a diamond toward the ♦AQ, and West follows small. Which card do you play?

I give you David’s reasoning: if East is a reasonable player, he could well have smoothly ducked holding ♦Kx. But if he is a poor player you can assume he doesn’t have the uKx, and so you should finesse the ♦Q.

But what about West? Holding Kxx, only the very best players would smoothly duck. So if he’s an expert, you should probably finesse rather than go for the drop. If West is an average player, you should assume he doesn’t hold the ♦K and go for the drop.

However — listen up at the back! — you need to balance that against your opinion of East: if East is a far poorer player than West, you should probably go for the finesse.

One useful thing to emerge from all this advice is that next time I find myself defending against David with this particular holding, I’ll know what he really thinks of me depending on how he plays the hand!