Spades Strategy: Introduction to Finessing

A finesse is a technique that you can use to try and increase the number of tricks that your team takes.

This can be useful on high bid tables or to recoup lost tricks that your team might have bid.

Put simply, a finesse is an attempt to win a trick with a card that is not guaranteed to win.

For example, winning the first lead of a suit with a Q instead of an A. Here is a demonstration:

We have the choice between the Q♥️ and the A♥️.

If we choose to play the A♥️, we maximize the chance of winning the first heart trick.

However, we will concede the K♥️ to the opponents if either of them has it on the second lead of hearts.

Going back to our choice of card...

Whenever East holds the K♥️, the Q♥️ will win the trick, giving us 2 tricks in hearts when we'd normally win 1.

And if East plays the K♥️, we cover with the A♥️ and our Q♥️ gets promoted to the 2nd round winner.

Finessing East for a K should produce an extra trick 50% of the time, bids being equal.

When West holds the K♥️, the K♥️ will always win a trick in hearts regardless of our choice.

If we play the A♥️, West plays low and wins the K♥️ on the second lead of hearts as expected.

If we play the Q♥️, West wins the K♥️ right away.

Even though there is some risk, our A♥️ still has a high chance of winning the second round of hearts.

A suit with gaps in its honors (Aces and face cards), is called a tenace (pronounced "tennis"). For example, a suit containing AQJ is considered a tenace because it is missing the K.

When holding a tenace, it is important not to lead from this suit. If you want to maximize tricks for the hand, let another player lead the suit for you.

In the previous example, if we play the A from a suit containing AQ, the opponent holding the K will simply play low and will always win it on the second lead of the suit.

Whereas if we let another player lead the suit for us, we win additional tricks whenever the missing K is to our right.

A finesse can be taken whenever East leads...

They can be taken whenever North leads...

And the most ideal time, whenever West leads. This "free finesse" will always result in an extra trick.

Since we get to see all the cards before we get to play, we can either win with a losing honor...

Or cover an opponent's honor and promote the ones we're still holding.

Sometimes when a finesse succeeds, we will need multiple leads. In the following example:

On this 12 bid table, partner makes an attractive heart lead for us. We finesse East for the K♥️...

And it holds (or West is asleep at the wheel). We can make a safe assumption the K♥️ is indeed with East.

The rule about not leading from our heart tenace is still true. We want another heart lead not by us.

We pick another suit to lead from:

And luckily end up in partner's hand. We get another good heart lead and finesse East a second time for the K♥️.

With no heart losers, it is safe to cash the A♥️ if we want to.

The opponents are off to a rough start and a set is looming on the horizon.

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