37 Finessing efficiently

I’m going to start by telling you not to take any finesse until you have to. A good summary of how to make extra tricks is Dump, trump, finesse and it is usually best to explore the first two before finessing: you might pick up valuable clues as to where the missing card is. And you might find that you don’t even need to take that finesse at all. Finesses can lose, the other two don’t, usually.

It is also good to have in mind exactly what a finesse is: it is defined as an attempt to take a trick with a card lower than one held by an opponent, by making him play before you.

Fine. A successful promotional finesse means that the threat card is always second player rather than fourth player.  Simple examples are when you lead up to Kx(x) or AQ(x). You have made a mental wish “I hope the threat card (A, or K) is in 2nd player’s hand”.

 But a more sophisticated play is not only to succeed in making your lower card but to actually catch and kill the threat card. You need several other cards for this. Examples abound so I’ll just give one: A10xx opposite KJxx and you want to catch the missing queen. First you must make a mental wish (based on clues from previous play or bidding) as to which opposing hand has the royal threat card. Of course, if you are missing the king there is only one possible hand – the one before the ace.. Now here are your rules.

1 Locate the killer card (A or K) that will cover the threat card, and lead from the opposite hand.

2 Lead the highest card from this hand (this may sometimes drop the threat card).

3 Lead the highest remaining honour from the same hand and see what happens. (If the queen appears, chop it, otherwise:-

4 Lead again from this hand, low if necessary and finesse from the killer hand.

5 If queen still out, play the killer card and she will surely drop, unless there are 14 cards in this suit.

So in the example given, it either goes A 10…J K  or K J …10 A.

All this is sometimes called finessing for a cover.

Some final advice for learners and careless people: If you haven’t got all those supporting cards, you mustn’t fall into a simple error when you have only ace and queen. When they are in the same hand AQ(x) we lead up to the queen hoping the king is with 2nd player.  BUT if your two honours are in separate hands, ie  Axx opposite Qxx, you must not lead the queen because you have seen good players doing so - they are doing the above catching play. OK, say your queen is covered by the king and you kill that with your ace, you had better not feel triumphant unless you have got the jack and perhaps the ten, because they are now bosses. You have wasted your queen. Now do it the right way. Lead from the ace hand (you can play the ace first if you like), just lead towards the queen and it makes 50% of the time. Sorted.