We have all heard of the term finesse, and we are used to performing this routine play of trapping some honor card when we hold one or two higher-ranking cards above the honor we are finessing against. We have several different strains of finesses but in this article I am going to address the obligatory finesse.

The definition of an obligatory finesse is the play of a small card by third hand on the second lead of a suit in the hope that the fourth player holds only the top card in the suit. The real object of this play is to limit our losers when we hold only two of the five honors in a suit. This play will usually take place when the location of this master card is known either from leading the suit once, or from the bidding. This play occurs quite frequently when the opponents hold five cards in some suit such as in spades, below:

North Q 7 4 2 West A 5 East J 10 9 South K 8 6 3

Let's say South plays the 3 and the Q wins the trick. The 2 is now returned. If South plays the K he will lose this trick and also lose another one later. If, however, he assumes the Ace is in LHO's hand, either from not seeing it returned from pard, or the bidding has located this card, or simply because the Queen held the trick, he should play low.   This is known as the obligatory finesse.

This play costs nothing since the other honors are missing. If the A does not fall, but say we lose to the Jack or 10, there was nothing that could be done about it anyway. This play can lose nothing since, if the cards are otherwise distributed, at least two tricks must be lost in spades. Hence an obligatory finesse is a play which can't lose but may very well gain us a trick.

Regards,
Ruffkid1 (Jay Tomlinson)