Foster's Common sense in whist by Foster Robert Frederick 1853-

Author:Foster, Robert Frederick, 1853-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Whist
Publisher: Brooklyn, N.Y., R.F. Foster
Published: 1898-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

With the king jack and small third hand, the supporting card led being anything below a ten, the jack should always be played unless the second hand puts up the ace or queen.

The whole question depends upon the position of these two cards, ace and queen, and there are four distributions possible, which are as follows, with the number of times they will occur in 1000, the third hand being B :

The only position which makes a difference is the first, and agreeably to the general principles of finesse we must always assume that it is the one that exists. If your partner has two of the suit only, and you have three, the chances for the suit to go round three times are about seven out of eight, which will give you plenty of room to finesse. If the king is played to the first round, that is the only possible trick in the suit, unless the adversaries are very bad players, and make your jack good by leading through your partner's weakness up to your strength ; but we must not calculate on bad play to give us tricks. If the jack is finessed in every instance it will make no difference except in the first position, in which it will gain 214 tricks in 1000 deals.

So that while we found it to be bad policy to finesse the jack from king jack and small with a long suit player for a partner, exactly the contrary is the case when the partner leads the top of nothing. The chief lesson to be learned from this difference is the importance of knowing when it is the top of nothing that is led, as distinguished from the bottom of a long suit containing honors, and the importance of third hand's knowing the difference in his play required by the difference in the circumstances.

It cannot be too strongly impressed on the student that the lead itself is seldom or never responsible for the loss of tricks; it is always the failure of the third hand to adapt himself to the true circumstances of the case. The great trouble with most persons who play, or think they play, supporting cards, is that their partners don't know how to follow out the theory, and throw away the advantages arising from the position. Then they condemn the ** short-suit game," as they call it, and say it is all nonsense.

The Second Hand*

There are two very common mistakes made by modern players in handling certain combinations of high cards second hand. The first and most important is in finessing against their partners, and the second is in failing to protect themselves.

In the long-suit game, playing on small cards led, the second hand should always play in the smallest card of any combination of high cards from which he would lead a high card, if he had to lead the suit. This rule should be extended to ace and four others, even if one is the

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