[wyman]

So, I played a hand in 3N, made it, and I think it was a tough hand. WTG me. Except, I feel like I completely floundered my way through it and wasn't sure what to do at a bunch of seemingly critical junctures (like, every time I had to lead). In an effort to improve my declarer play, I'd like to take you through the hand with me, and I'd appreciate comments at any stage you feel the need to interject. Sorry that it's played from the north.

---

T1: I figure I should play low from dummy. If heart KJ are split, I'm looking at 3 heart tricks if RHO puts in the honor. If this pans out (or if hearts are 3-3), I'm looking at 1 spade, 3 hearts, 1 diamond, and 2 clubs, so I'll have to manufacture 2 more. The club hook may provide an 8th, and opps may be endplayed into leading spades or (more likely) diamonds. When I see the H9, I strongly suspect that I have 3 tricks.

T2: I can get started on my spades, but even if I establish them, my only sure entry is in hearts, and I only have one, so I feel like this can only go poorly for me. I felt like it was better at this point to try to take the club hook, so I played a low heart and inserted the 10, which held.

T3: Club hook held. Now I've got 1 + 3 + 1 + 3, so I only need to establish 1.

T4: Club ace. Looks safe enough, though my spots aren't good enough to withstand it if clubs break poorly and the long clubs have some entries. But I did this in case I needed it to extract a safe exit in case clubs were 5-2.

T5: Heart up. If they are breaking, I'm home. They don't. RHO suggests that he has the ♦K. So now I'm thinking endplay.

T6: I didn't want to lead the 4th heart because I wanted RHO on lead. So I played a spade toward the K (if LHO has the spade ace, he'll get in to lead the diamond thru anyway). LHO won the ace.

T7: Heart, RHO pitches a club, which I thought was strange. In hindsight, should this suggest Jx of spades? I pitched a diamond from hand. Is this right? It felt like I might need to pitch a club and save the diamond, but it's possible that clubs were 4-3, and now my clubs are cashing. Oh, but I only need to establish one club anyway, so it can't hurt (beyond blowing an overtrick) to pitch the club.

T8: Diamond jack. Beautiful card. Now I'm home.

Thoughts? TIA.

[Phil]

I like this approach to play hands. You did have a lot of key decisions, and the best way to get real feedback is to go through your thought process trick by trick. Kit Woolsey does this on Bridgewinners, and its awesome.

Trick 1. If the lead is a true 4th best lead, you are a lock for 3 tricks. The 8 is known on your left (RHO plays the 8 from 98 doubleton). If the lead is 3rd best, you'll take 3 tricks anyway.

This gets our count up to 7, assuming we can establish one spade trick.

My general approach to this hand would be to work on spades initially. The natural play is to lead up to the K, but we are short of entries, so I would play the ♠K at T2. Yes, they can attack the entries, however, if RHO wins the spade, the natural continuation is a club through dummy's weakness. If that occurs, we are in really good shape, and can establish spades for enough tricks if they are 3-3, and can try for a diamond trick, or something in the endgame.

If LHO wins (and he needs to, otherwise the ♠A hits air), he may attack dummies entry with a heart. We then need spades 3-3, and the ♦K onside, but also have some chances in the endgame.

Trick 2. You choose to play a heart. Fine. They don't split, which is a fundamental error - how does your LHO know you don't have Qx?

Trick 3 - club hook working.

Trick 4 - I'm not sure about removing the exit cards for the opponents. I would rather maintain control of the club suit and duck a trick at this point. I need to lose a club regardless, and I'd rather do it sooner than later. I think you put too much stock into the ♣T. This is a very normal falsecard from T9x, or even T9xx.

Trick 5 - Why don't you establish clubs at this point? Anyway, when you lead a heart, they can't break 3-3 since LHO is known to have KJ left. I don't agree with your inference about the ♦K on your right. RHO has to discard something.

Trick 6. Fine.

Trick 7. RHO's club pitch to protect spades isn't thinking about the hand as a whole. A spade is safe from 3. I'm not sure what I would think here.

Trick 8. Defenders as a rule get too busy attacking suits in the middle game. A spade exit would have made your life tougher.

[wyman]

Phil, on 2011-August-02, 09:46, said:

I like this approach to play hands. You did have a lot of key decisions, and the best way to get real feedback is to go through your thought process trick by trick. Kit Woolsey does this on Bridgewinners, and its awesome.

Agree.

Plus I just learned (lol technology) how to kib only one player when I'm watching vugraph [options --> more options --> advanced options --> kibbing]. It is fun to play along, so long as you can ignore commentary, and then look back to try to figure out the inferences they made.

[gnasher]

Quote

I feel like I completely floundered my way through it and wasn't sure what to do at a bunch of seemingly critical junctures (like, every time I had to lead)

That sounds familar. Maybe it would be better to say that you continually reevaluated the different lines of play as more information became available.

I don't have much to add to what Phil said, except:

Trick 2: I'm sure it's right to play ♠K, because I'm going to need at least one spade trick, and might be able to set up one or two long cards. If it holds, I don't have to continue the suit - I can decide what to do after seeing their signals, and I might revert to playing on hearts and clubs. If the spade loses, several good things could happen - they may continue hearts, trying to attack dummy's entries, or they may switch to clubs, or they may give me a second diamond trick.

Trick 5: After ♣JA, I'd play a low club. If they're 4-3 I'm almost home; if not, maybe I'll have time to switch back to spades and diamonds. The third heart looks wrong, because it sets up a trick for the opponents, and you may need the long heart as a threat or an exit.

[wyman]

gnasher, on 2011-August-02, 11:52, said:

That sounds familar. Maybe it would be better to say that you continually reevaluated the different lines of play as more information became available.

You have a future in politics, my friend.

[BunnyGo]

wyman, on 2011-August-02, 09:54, said:

Agree.

Plus I just learned (lol technology) how to kib only one player when I'm watching vugraph [options --> more options --> advanced options --> kibbing]. It is fun to play along, so long as you can ignore commentary, and then look back to try to figure out the inferences they made.

Wow! that's great. I'd heard of it, but didn't know how to do it.

[Phil]

BunnyGo, on 2011-August-02, 11:58, said:

Wow! that's great. I'd heard of it, but didn't know how to do it.

I always watch matches from one player's perspective. Looking at all four hands colors your judgement, which is why so many commentators are lousy, since they cannot analyze the hand from a single POV.

[semeai]

Phil, on 2011-August-02, 13:07, said:

I always watch matches from one player's perspective. Looking at all four hands colors your judgement, which is why so many commentators are lousy, since they cannot analyze the hand from a single POV.

I've often wondered whether there would be value in commentators who only looked at one hand.

Maybe there could occasionally be the decision to have all commentators commenting from the perspective of, say, the South hand (to have a definite choice) in one of the rooms.

If they ever implement channels for the chat (like voice: you can turn on or off some commentators) you could instead have a "south's perspective" channel. You could even already do this by making the other commentators enemies, but that's a bit less elegant.

The downside is that there would be some dull South hands occasionally (though even then there's usually something in a dull hand). Maybe on such hands the commentators could say "okay, the hand is dull, let's switch to full view for this one."

[ArtK78]

wyman, on 2011-August-02, 09:01, said:

...

T1: I figure I should play low from dummy. If heart KJ are split, I'm looking at 3 heart tricks if RHO puts in the honor. If this pans out (or if hearts are 3-3), I'm looking at 1 spade, 3 hearts, 1 diamond, and 2 clubs, so I'll have to manufacture 2 more. The club hook may provide an 8th, and opps may be endplayed into leading spades or (more likely) diamonds. When I see the H9, I strongly suspect that I have 3 tricks.

T2: I can get started on my spades, but even if I establish them, my only sure entry is in hearts, and I only have one, so I feel like this can only go poorly for me. I felt like it was better at this point to try to take the club hook, so I played a low heart and inserted the 10, which held.

...

T5: Heart up. If they are breaking, I'm home. They don't.

...

I have to admit I thought this was funny. The opening heart lead ran to your Q, and, at trick two, you played a heart to the 10, which held.

I wonder where the K and the J of hearts are located?

I suspect the probability of the suit breaking 3-3 after the 10 of hearts holds at trick two is about as close to zero as you can get.

With this one flaw, I thought the presentation of your thought processes through the play of the hand was excellent.

[wyman]

semeai, on 2011-August-02, 13:15, said:

If they ever implement channels for the chat (like voice: you can turn on or off some commentators) you could instead have a "south's perspective" channel. You could even already do this by making the other commentators enemies, but that's a bit less elegant.

The downside is that there would be some dull South hands occasionally (though even then there's usually something in a dull hand). Maybe on such hands the commentators could say "okay, the hand is dull, let's switch to full view for this one."

Along the line of Kit's articles and Gavin's videos (both excellent, imo) on BW, I think this would be incredible. Of course, it would require a commentator who was a world class player, willing to work through the hands for one or more sessions, a good speaker, and honest -- in the sense that it would really be difficult to do this well if the commentator ever "peeked."

I think this would be extraordinarily interesting and educational, and if it's ever done, it should be archived.

One thing I don't know is how damaging this sort of thing might be to a WC player -- that is, would seeing the player's thought process be useful to opponents?

I am going to cross-post this to one of the VG Voice discussions.

[wyman]

ArtK78, on 2011-August-02, 14:46, said:

I have to admit I thought this was funny. The opening heart lead ran to your Q, and, at trick two, you played a heart to the 10, which held.

I wonder where the K and the J of hearts are located?

I suspect the probability of the suit breaking 3-3 after the 10 of hearts holds at trick two is about as close to zero as you can get.

With this one flaw, I thought the presentation of your thought processes through the play of the hand was excellent.

Yes, I shouldn't have even suggested it.

Thanks for the kind words. I want to write up more hands I botch play. I've been doing it for myself for a little while now, and the "right" plays are often evident after the fact. Hopefully this process will make them become evident during (?) the fact.