[Flameous]

Antrax, west is ruffing the club if lead was a singleton. Seems more likely that you should use ♦ entry now to draw trumps.

[mgoetze]

Flameous, on 2012-February-04, 05:58, said:

Antrax, west is ruffing the club if lead was a singleton. Seems more likely that you should use ♦ entry now to draw trumps.

Yes, the club ruff is exactly what went wrong at the other tables that got to this point. Here's how the hand played out at my table:

---

Note that finessing against the ♦10 at the end is a 100% play, as West had a singleton club, four hearts, at most four spades and therefore at least four diamonds.

Things to remember about this hand:

• If an opponent makes a (standard) lead of a Jack, and you have the Ten, they are likely looking for a ruff.
  
• If an opponent is threatening to get a ruff, don't forget about it until all his trumps have been taken care of.
  
• If one opponent is known to be long in two suits it greatly increases the chances that he is short in the other two.

Hopefully, the discussion about restricted choice was also useful for some of the intermediate players.

[mgoetze]

Oh, BTW, a note on the bidding. Shockingly many were in 3♥ (and still took mostly 8 or 9 tricks, with one player taking 11). Even in GIB's simplistic evaluation scheme, 4♥ is absolutely the book bid here (17 HCP + 1 doubleton = 18 total points). Further note that we really have prime points here (the queen of trumps is better than any other queen, aces are rad, a king is better in an AK combo than alone), and also East's 2♠ makes it more likely that (at least some of) partner's points are in the minors where they can help us rather than wasted in spades. So I'm pretty convinced you shouldn't be thinking about other bids than 4♥.

[Antrax]

Oh. Interesting. I should've counted the hand better - when I worked it out, W having a singleton club left E with six of them, in which case 2♠ seems like a weird bid to make. With 5-5 it's not as surprising

[edit]
And thanks mgoetze! I really like real-life hands because "book" (and BM2K) hands usually are so tailored it's difficult to apply the lessons at the table.

[han]

Very nice hand and presentation.

On a more advanced level the most interesting card seems to be the diamond queen. Do you think that RHO did well by playing the diamond queen, or was this a mistake?

[HighLow21]

Ah! I knew I knew the username from somewhere. :-) Good kibbitzing your table last night Michael --> and I agree with Han, good writeup and very well presented.

[mgoetze]

han, on 2012-February-04, 09:13, said:

On a more advanced level the most interesting card seems to be the diamond queen. Do you think that RHO did well by playing the diamond queen, or was this a mistake?

Well, I know why GIB played the queen... GIB assumes I'm playing double dummy, and will drop the queen anyway if I have the ace, so the only relevant layouts are those in which GIB's partner has the Ace, however unlikely they may be.

But let's pretend there were 4 humans at the table. The upside to playing the queen is that you may induce declarer to finesse the 8 early, thus getting a trick you are not entitled to double-dummy. The downside is that declarer may have been planning to finesse the jack next.

So to some extent it depends on your perception of your opponents' perception of your overcalls, i.e. the question being discussed earlier of whether East would overcall without the ♦Q.

It certainly is an interesting aspect.

[mgoetze]

Oh yes, one more thing. Several declarers went astray by playing a heart to the king at trick 2. Now I'm pretty confident that, had I posted this hand as a trick 2 problem, noone would have come up with the line "heart to the king". That's because people always give forum hands some modicum of thought. But in reality people are sometimes lazy and then plays like heart to the king happen.

To put it the way Larry Cohen does: "You absolutely must think at trick one!"