[nielsfoged]

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IMPS. Very strong opponents.
Lead ♦8 (3rd/5th).
If you play low (as I assume) East produces ♦K.
How do you play (anything fancy on your mind)?

/Niels

[Fluffy]

The OP makes it clear (at least to me) what you intend us to answer, it sounds interesting but if it fails you will have problems explaining, but certainly the range of opps makes it very likelly to work. Did you cook the hand yourself?

[nielsfoged]

Fluffy, on 2011-December-18, 18:20, said:

The OP makes it clear (at least to me) what you intend us to answer, it sounds interesting but if it fails you will have problems explaining, but certainly the range of opps makes it very likelly to work. Did you cook the hand yourself?

No, this hand is not home-cooked. I played it on BBO yesterday, and did not do anything fancy - probably I should have!
However, there were too many dishes to choose from, and too short time to pick.
So, if the most delicious one is clear to you, Fluffy, I am ready to taste it. Does it come in double portions?

[Fluffy]

I am often too cryptic I know , what I though you meant with something fancy is to duck creating the image to RHO of ♦AQ8x, next trick we play the Jack and LHO will then be seeing something odd, but will very likelly play another one from his Q98x (now 9x) into our A7 tenace.


Against lesser opps playing ♦2+♦7 will be enough.

[nielsfoged]

Fluffy, on 2011-December-19, 04:50, said:

I am often too cryptic I know , what I though you meant with something fancy is to duck creating the image to RHO of ♦AQ8x, next trick we play the Jack and LHO will then be seeing something odd, but will very likelly play another one from his Q98x (now 9x) into our A7 tenace.


Against lesser opps playing ♦2+♦7 will be enough.

Yes, I had the double duck (not the dish though! - but ♦2+♦7) in mind.
However, I think playing the J on 2nd round is too suspicious to work. What diamond position would LHO who likely holds Q98x imagine? - Could it be AKxxx in his partners hand, or could he think that we played low twice from AJ2 with T3 on table to break communications, but lose a stopper and a trick?

What about something less fancy, if you take ♦A immediately. Would you rather play ♦ again immediately or would you take the 5 club-tricks first and hope that discards became too uncomfortable for the opponents (and the table!) maybe claryfying the spade-position?

What about something more fancy, playing ♥ yourself. If so, must it come from the table to have any chance at all? I neither had the guts to play ♥T in trick 2, nor wanted to play small ♣ to the J and then play ♥, most of all because it would be almost offending to try to pull that trick against these opponents.

/Niels

[Fluffy]

With J72 it costs nothing to play the Jack at trick 2 to create some rare images in opp´s mind, like LHO leading a hoonor and you "unblock" Jx from dummy holding nothing in hand. I need to improve doing this kind of things.

[dake50]

1. To D10 dare opponents to cash 4xH.
2. To CJ and "finesse" HJ.
3. SA, to SJ hoping SQ onside.
4. Cash clubs to get a hint of their distribution.
Which is "fancy"?

[gnasher]

I don't think you can simulate J72. Suppose that the suit is Q986 opposite K54. RHO will return the 5, but from AK54 he would have returned the 4.

Hence, if you're going to do this, I think you should play 2 and 7, simulating 742. RHO's 5 will appear to be from AKJ5, which is believeable (though he might have played the jack at trick one from that).

[JLOGIC]

Why do we think RHO will even continue diamonds? His partner led the 8 third and fifth, he might very well have a heart shift. If the opps are at all reasonable this is not likely to work. The 8 of hearts gives us something legit to play for if we don't like how the spade finesse looks later, like the 9 of hearts being third and us driving the diamond eventually. I would start by running 4 rounds of clubs and going from there, we might also get a heart pitch from a 4 card suit pretty easily.

[mikeh]

I think doing anything other than winning the diamond and playing clubs is just looking far too deeply into the hand. The opps know you have the club suit locked up, and that you have at least 5 of them, so if you do anything else at all, they will know you are trying to do something cute. Meanwhile, with all the skill in the world, they will still have to make discards early on without sufficient information to work out the major suit holdings. As Justin said, you may easily get a heart pitch.

Even if you don't, when the opps have to defend carefully.....when you have 8 winners and lots of chances for 9......they almost have to be honest in their carding because they don't know enough to be able to safely false-card.

Sometimes simple is best.

[nielsfoged]

mikeh, on 2011-December-19, 12:50, said:

I think doing anything other than winning the diamond and playing clubs is just looking far too deeply into the hand. The opps know you have the club suit locked up, and that you have at least 5 of them, so if you do anything else at all, they will know you are trying to do something cute. Meanwhile, with all the skill in the world, they will still have to make discards early on without sufficient information to work out the major suit holdings. As Justin said, you may easily get a heart pitch.

Even if you don't, when the opps have to defend carefully.....when you have 8 winners and lots of chances for 9......they almost have to be honest in their carding because they don't know enough to be able to safely false-card.

Sometimes simple is best.

I agree, and it was first after I played the board, I started thinking of all the fancy stuff.
Already in his first reply Fluffy noticed, that I phrased my question to inspire fancy answers - at least some were inspired!

[gszes]

nielsfoged, on 2011-December-18, 16:37, said:

---

IMPS. Very strong opponents.
Lead ♦8 (3rd/5th).
If you play low (as I assume) East produces ♦K.
How do you play (anything fancy on your mind)?

/Niels

I think the running of the clubs is a great idea but IMO I would run
all 5 of them and pitch 3 small hearts from dummy. We can see that
those 4 hearts might be needed to keep opps from taking 5 tricks
(4h 1d) but they wont know that for sure unless we make them suspicious
by keeping what appear to be 4 otherwise useless cards. It is VERY hard
for opps to know the importance of keeping 4 hearts for ex rho starting with
Kxxx might let go of a heart once we reduce dummy to a singleton heart.

[Free]

There are 2 "fancy" things that probably won't work:
- playing ♦J under the K
- taking ♦A, go to dummy and play ♥ to the J

I think our chances are better after a normal line like taking ♦A and playing some ♣s.