[smerriman]

From the Diana & Friends tournament. When you know there's something interesting about a hand, it often makes it considerably easier to find the best line, and this is probably no exception. But when it's just another hand in a tournament, it's easy to think it's just another flat board and not pay attention.

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West leads the ♥J at matchpoints. What's your plan? And would you have paused just long enough to carry it out?

On the first trick East..

Spoiler

plays the ♥K, switching to a club spot

and trumps break..

Spoiler

0-3

Edited - hand originally posted had A7 of clubs instead of the real AJ.

[pilowsky]

A bit of confirmation bias perhaps?
The boards have been "allegedly" random for quite some time.

[smerriman]

pilowsky, on 2023-November-02, 02:17, said:

A bit of confirmation bias perhaps?
The boards have been "allegedly" random for quite some time.

I meant the fact it's posted in this forum makes it easier, not the fact it appeared in the tournament.

[mikeh]

I’d check their lead agreements. Every now and then you encounter players using the worst lead agreement ever (not my personal opinion…Bob Hamman says so!) where the Jack denies a higher honour,so I can fairly safely play the Ace, expecting to drop the king. However, I’d usually duck.

My plan is fairly simple and I woukd be embarrassed not to think of it.

Spoiler

If the queen wins, diamond to the A, ruff diamond, spade to dummy, ruff diamond, spade to dummy, ruff diamond with the ace. If trump are 2-1, either way, they’re drawn now but if they are 3-0, presumably with east, I can safely cash the heart ace after playing my last trump in hand to dummy. Note that I’m safe even if west has a stiff diamond, which I would expect him to have led which is why I didn’t mention it earlier. I lose the OT but still make and I’m not playing east to be 1=1=7=4 or 0=1=8=4j

If RHO wins the king of hearts…he should return a spade. But I play the same way…win in dummy and play diamond ace, ruff, spade, ruff, spade to dummy, ruff. Then I get my two heart tricks.

Either way I score 4 trump in dummy, 4 diamonds, counting three ruffs, two hearts and a club.

I’d play the same way at any form of scoring.

[Cyberyeti]

Why would you think it's a flat board ? There's an easy 5♣ save for 300 even with the diamond ruff.

11 tricks seem trivial here and the only way you make 12 is via Mike's line where the diamonds are KQx/xxxxx

[smerriman]

Aargh, I messed up. South held AJ of clubs, not A7 of clubs.

[smerriman]

Well, after messing up the hand, I may as well just say what happened.

You have 11 trivial tricks no matter what you do, given you can ruff the 4th heart (perhaps mikeh miscounted his tricks since none of the diamond ruffs are necessary to reach 11). The only question is whether you can do anything about your club and heart loser.

The only option I could see was the remote chance of being able to drop KQx of diamonds. Given plenty of entries, I could afford to draw all three rounds of trumps, since you can then play ♦A, ruff a diamond, cross to the last trump, ruff another diamond, and still have the ♥A to cross with if the ♦J is now cashing.

They didn't drop, so I took 11 tricks.

I missed the crucial part of the hand, which is also the crucial part that had a typo in the original post If West has ♣KQ - likely given the bidding - you're actually cold for 12 tricks. You can only afford to play one round of trumps; by ruffing all three diamonds immediately after that, you reverse dummy - this in itself doesn't give you any extra tricks, but now when leading the last trump from dummy, West is squeezed, unable to hold onto both the clubs and the length in hearts.

(So mikeh's line in fact worked perfectly on the intended hand, even if somewhat unintentionally!)

[mikeh]

smerriman, on 2023-November-02, 15:10, said:

Well, after messing up the hand, I may as well just say what happened.

You have 11 trivial tricks no matter what you do, given you can ruff the 4th heart (perhaps mikeh miscounted his tricks since none of the diamond ruffs are necessary to reach 11). The only question is whether you can do anything about your club and heart loser.

The only option I could see was the remote chance of being able to drop KQx of diamonds. Given plenty of entries, I could afford to draw all three rounds of trumps, since you can then play ♦A, ruff a diamond, cross to the last trump, ruff another diamond, and still have the ♥A to cross with if the ♦J is now cashing.

They didn't drop, so I took 11 tricks.

I missed the crucial part of the hand, which is also the crucial part that had a typo in the original post If West has ♣KQ - likely given the bidding - you're actually cold for 12 tricks. You can only afford to play one round of trumps; by ruffing all three diamonds immediately after that, you reverse dummy - this in itself doesn't give you any extra tricks, but now when leading the last trump from dummy, West is squeezed, unable to hold onto both the clubs and the length in hearts.

(So mikeh's line in fact worked perfectly on the intended hand, even if somewhat unintentionally!)

Better lucky than good. On the OP hand, there was no possible squeeze

[shyams]

The unfortunate part is that a fairly large proportion of tables played the board in 5S dbl (a few redoubled!) and made it.

I declared in 4S. I think I ruffed the three diamonds but I did not realise that a squeeze will work so I played tamely for 11 tricks

[johnu]

I would always duck the heart. If West has lead away from an interior sequence, playing the ace is the only way to lose 2 tricks in hearts (or 3 if East ruffs out the ace). If East has singleton king, I still need to lose a heart and with aces in the other suits, there's no killing switch from East.

Obviously you could ruff the long heart in dummy but that's still only 11 tricks. Possible squeezes. Hearts and diamonds against west? Only 10 top tricks without ruffing hearts.

But, suppose West has ♣KQ and ♦KQ in addition to the long hearts. Then there's a triple squeeze that gains 2 tricks. First, West has to unguard one of three suits when you run trumps. You cash whatever suit West unguards which squeezes him in the remaining 2 suits. But, if there's no triple squeeze, you only make 10 tricks.

A simple club-heart squeeze looks best. Ruffing out the diamonds while drawing trump gives 11 tricks, and if West has ♦KQ or ♦KQx with 5 clubs, then that's 12 tricks. Or if West has 5 clubs to the KQ, there's an easy club heart squeeze.