You are South in a contract of four spades. The opening lead by West is the spade deuce. You begin by counting your potential losers you are in a suit contract: one spade, one heart, one diamond, and one club for a total of four losers. You start by trying to drop the spade queen, but that does not work. West started with four spades to the queen. Now what is the best chance to reduce your losers to three?
North Dummy:
South Declarer:
Give it some thought before scrolling down for my recommendation:
How about trying the diamond suit? If diamonds break 3-3, the jack will later provide a parking place for a heart loser after you have lost a trick to the queen of diamonds. That’s a 36 percent chance. But there is also the chance that you will drop the queen of diamonds when it is singleton or part of doubleton. That would eliminate the diamond loser. Its chance is roughly one percent for the singleton queen plus 16 percent for the doubleton queen. Bottom line: the diamond suit provides approximately 53 percent chance of eliminating one loser (36+1+16).