By David Burn

ONE OF THE MOST IRRITATING positions to get wrong as declarer is the combination known as the "king-jack guess". This deal from the World Mixed Pairs championship in Lille is an example of what I mean:

			K 9
			Q J 10
			K J 8 3
			K J 4 3
	5 3 2				A Q 6
	A 9 8 5 2				K 7 3
	Q 6				A 9 5 4 2
	Q 8 7				10 6
			J 10 8 7 4
			6 4
			10 7
			A 9 5 2

South	West	North	East
Cronier	Meckstroth	Rossard	Chambers
		1	Pass
1	Pass	1NT	Pass
2	Pass	Pass	Pass

West led the 7 to East's ten and declarer's ace. Cronier led a heart at trick two, which Meckstroth won with the ace. He switched to the six of diamonds, and Cronier judged to play the king from dummy. Juanita Chambers won the ace and returned a diamond to the queen. A heart to East's king was followed by a third round of diamonds, on which declarer elected to discard a club, so Meckstroth ruffed and with two more trumps to come, the defence had +200 and a virtual top.

Cronier is one of the nicest guys in the game, and I'm sure he was the first to congratulate Meckstroth on an excellent defence, but you may be sure that he did so with murder in his heart. Nobody really minds losing a two-way finesse for a queen, since this is regarded as purely a matter of chance - though most players have their own views on how to play a trump suit such as:

	A1093
	KJ86

My wife believes that if you have to tackle this suit at trick two, you should lead from whichever hand you happened to win trick one in and finesse a card from the other hand, on the basis that God put you where He did at the first trick for a reason. Another theory is that you should finesse into the hand of your less obnoxious opponent - that way, losing the trick won't hurt so badly.

Unless the opening lead has been from an "obvious" combination such as king-queen, there is a slight technical edge in favour of playing the opening leader for the queen of trumps - if he didn't have it, he might have led a trump. In a Mixed Pairs event, of course, the correct way to play the suit is to finesse into the hand of the opponent less likely to know what to do when he wins the trick.

But losing a king-jack guess is not a matter of chance - it's a confrontation between you and the opponent who's given you the guess, and it is a severe blow to the amour propre of any declarer to get it wrong. Here are some thoughts on how you can preserve the shreds of your frail ego for a little while longer the next time this kind of position happens to you at the table.

In the examples which follow, I will assume that the "king-jack suit" is a side suit in a trump contract - at no trumps, the position is often less critical and inferences from the opening lead are different. Your objective as declarer is simply to make the "right" guess to avoid two losers in the suit.