whaack

With 2 cards missing, let's say the K and the 2, it's easy to mislead oneself by drawing conclusions from the following table of all possibilities of the missing cards:

The erroneous conclusion is that an even split is equally likely to a king onside. The above table lists all the possible layouts of the suit in question, but it does not take into account the rest of the deal.

For any deal, once you see the dummy, there are ₂₆C₁₃ ways the remaining cards can be laid out against you.

If LHO has the K, and the other the 2, there are ₂₄C₁₂ more cards you can give to LHO. For every hand thus given, you can swap the king and the 2, so the number of hands where the drop is right is 2 * ₂₄C₁₂.

If the finesse is right, then either a specific player has the K and the 2, ₂₄C₁₁ deals, or the singleton king is onside, which accounts for another ₂₄C₁₂ more deals.

So it is sightly better to play for the drop, given no other information.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2026 at 11:31 p.m. and is filed under Contract Bridge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.