[ceeb]

gnasher, on Jul 7 2008, 04:16 PM, said:

mikeh, on Jul 7 2008, 05:56 PM, said:

Win the spade in dummy, heart to the K, club to the 10.

If it loses to the J, they can't attack hearts and spades at the same time, so they will usually play a spade. Win in hand, pitching a heart from dummy, cash the heart K, in case either the Queen appears or the 109 have both dropped (in which case I cross in diamonds and take/establish my 9th trick in hearts).

If nothing good happens, cash the diamond K then AQ.

Maybe diamonds were 3-3, then I am home.

If not, then I hook the club Q.

This is the line I should have suggested - for some reason I first cashed ♥AK too early, then thought that cashing them later meant I couldn't have ♥109 as one of my winning options.

I can't understand why anyone thinks that a small extra chance in clubs makes up for giving up one of diamonds 3-3 or ♥Q doubleton.

It's not as small as the red suit chances.

If you try to combine chances via

r1. club to the 10 (50+%)
r2. a red suit cooperates (50%)
r3. club to the Q (50%)

then you have 3 50/50 (very nearly) shots, net of 7/8.

The (second) best play in clubs alone is better than that. Play it:

c1. Club to the 10 (50+%)
c2. Cash club Ace -- Kx with LHO (4%)
c3. Lead a club toward the Q -- 75%.

Hence thanks to the preparatory play c2, c3 becomes equal to r2+r3. The vigorish from c2 not to mention dry red honors and power of the ♣7 are the edge.

[gnasher]

I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but what's wrong with this analysis:

Compared with ♣A and a low one to the 10, my (or rather MikeH's) line gains against:
- ♥Q doubleton or ♥109 doubleton = 48.45 x (12/30) = 19.38
- Diamonds 3-3 = 35.53 x (1 - .1938) = 28.64

Totalling 48.02% (of the hands where at least one of the lines fails)

♣A and a low one to the 10 gains against:
- ♣Kxx with LHO = 35.53 x (6/20) = 10.66
- ♣Kx or ♣K642 with LHO = 48.45 x (5/30) x (1 - .1066) = 7.21
- Singleton diamond honour with LHO = 14.53 x (2/12) x (1- .1066 -.0721) = 1.99
(I've assumed that ♣Kxxxx with LHO is impossible)

Totalling 19.86% (of the hands where at least one of the lines fails)

So, have I missed some case where your line gains, or messed up the calculations, or what?

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2008-July-08, 03:08

[david_c]

gnasher, on Jul 8 2008, 10:06 AM, said:

Totalling 19.86% (of the hands where at least one of the lines fails)

So, have I missed some case where your line gains, or messed up the calculations, or what?

I think you've messed up the calculations. This 19.86% is not "of the hands where at least one of the lines fails", it's 19.86% of all hands. Since both lines succeed about three quarters of the time, you need to multiply your 19.86% by four.

[Edit: actually that only applies to the first two parts of the calculation, so it's less than 4 x 19.86%.]

This post has been edited by david_c: 2008-July-08, 03:25

[gnasher]

gnasher, on Jul 8 2008, 10:06 AM, said:

I'm prepared to be proved wrong

I'm glad I wrote those words. I have, in fact been proved wrong - sorry.

[nige1]

FrancesHinden, on Jul 7 2008, 04:09 AM, said:

This time, as a special treat, you get to play it on Vugraph
A5
J8642
AQ7
1072

Q64
AK
K964
AQ53

1D - 1H
2NT - 3D*
3H - 3NT

dummy showed a raise to 3NT with 5 hearts and not four spades. 3H was forced by 3D.  Declarer has shown nothing except 4+ diamonds, 18-19 balanced and no desire to play a 5-3 heart fit.

2 of spades lead to the King (4th highest)
3 of spades return to the ace

Plan the play

(there will be a part two to this in due course, but we'll see what the popular vote is to start with)

IMO, without contraindications from the play,

• ♠A, ♥AK.
  
• ♥ are 4-2 or 3-3, so
  • ♦Q, ♥8 discarding ♣.
    
  • ♥J isn't good, so ♠Q, ♦KA.
    
  • ♦9 isn't good, so finesse ♣Q.
  
  
• ♥ are 6-0 or 5-1, so
  • Lead to ♣T
    
  • Loses to ♣J, so win ♠Q, ♦QKA
    
  • ♦9 isn't good, so finesse ♣Q.

[mikeh]

FrancesHinden, on Jul 7 2008, 12:57 PM, said:

7 posters have replied, with 6 different lines.

I feel less bad about going off - I played one of the lines proposed here.

Must be a good problem!

Various things happen on early rounds of various suits, but let's wait and see if anyone else has any good ideas...

so?

[FrancesHinden]

Let's see:

Virtually everyone has made or gone off by now, because they've started life by playing on clubs.

If you follow the line of winning the spade and cashing the AK of hearts, LHO will discard a club on the second heart.

This is what I did, although the analysis here has (I think) proved me wrong.

Anyway, you aren't off yet. Now what?

[mikeh]

This has become tricky.

We have established the heart Q for the defence, who may have been able to retain communication in spades, which makes conceding 2 club tricks dangerous.. they get 2 spades, 2 clubs and the heart Q. It is this aspect that made me shy away from the early heart play, altho I concede that we might well have triumphed by losing only 2 hearts and 2 spades.... and, now I think about it a bit more, I like the line.. it gets complicated because on some layouts, rho can usefully switch to clubs if he started with 2 heart stoppers.

Back to where I am.

Assuming diamonds don't behave, the most likely shapes for lho appear to be 4=1=4=4 or 4=1=5=3, and I have a slight preference for the former.

So I play a diamond to the Q and a club to the Q. If it loses to the K and a spade comes back, I win, cash the diamond K and A, just in case the suit breaks, and then lead a low club to the Ace.

This makes when LHO began with KJx or Kxxx or any holding in clubs missing the K.

It also has the advantage of looking sexy (always the deciding factor, if the bridge odds are equal, on vugraph) when lho had 4=1=5=3 with KJx in clubs and had to decide, early, whether we had 5 diamonds.. if we had Qxx AK Kxxxx AQ9, this defence is necessary.

[FrancesHinden]

mikeh, on Jul 9 2008, 06:09 PM, said:

Back to where I am.

Assuming diamonds don't behave, the most likely shapes for lho appear to be 4=1=4=4 or 4=1=5=3, and I have a slight preference for the former.

So I play a diamond to the Q and a club to the Q. If it loses to the K and a spade comes back, I win, cash the diamond K and A, just in case the suit breaks, and then lead a low club to the Ace.

This makes when LHO began with KJx or Kxxx or any holding in clubs missing the K.

It also has the advantage of looking sexy (always the deciding factor, if the bridge odds are equal, on vugraph) when lho had 4=1=5=3 with KJx in clubs and had to decide, early, whether we had 5 diamonds.. if we had Qxx AK Kxxxx AQ9, this defence is necessary.

Oh well, that's more or less what I did (I cashed the CA first).

This goes off, because LHO started with
10xxx
x
J10xxx
Kxx

and they managed to unblock spades such that RHO could win the fourth round to cash his HQ.

The vugraph commentators thought I should have played a club towards the 10 after two top hearts, to try and persuade LHO to play the King from his now Kx, but I'm not convinced that would have worked.

Still I think I've been persuaded here that playing on clubs that is the right line, although I prefer a club to the 10 than the duck completely option.

At the other table they had a Precision club auction, diamonds were never bid naturally, and LHO led a low diamond which presented the 9th trick.

[mikeh]

Quote

The vugraph commentators thought I should have played a club towards the 10 after two top hearts, to try and persuade LHO to play the King from his now Kx, but I'm not convinced that would have worked.

FWIW, I think the commentators fell into the trap of analyzing the hand seeing the cards all held. Any opp good enough to discard the club (not that that was tough)and not block the spade and be on vugraph is odds-on good enough not to rise with the club K, nor to give it away... especially since I suspect that he had lots of time in which to plan his defence after he showed out on the heart... I doubt you played to the next trick immediately