xeno123, on 2016-October-31, 13:37, said:
All vul, Robot IMPS:
And do people agree with the splinter, which was a bit light by GIB's standards?
No. You are very close, but you have a 6-loser hand (5 1/2 adjusted.) The actual contract, which isn't that great, especially when you tell the opponents to lead diamonds, is enough evidence against the splinter. Your partner has a 7-loser hand (6 1/2 adjusted) which in itself should suggest a small slam with some to spare. Your partner has no wastage in clubs which should make his hand look even better than LTC suggests - if LTC suggests a small slam plus, and your hand doesn't have the CK, CQ, or CJ when partner has a singleton club, I would suspect that the two hands should produce decent play for a grand (maybe not enough to bid it though.)
I will grant you that North has a poor fitting hand with a singleton heart, so that LTC with a positive adjustment for no club wastage overestimates the hand. Still, if North has a hand such as:
Here North has no club wastage and the fitting heart honor. He has 8 losers now but the bidding makes his hand look better. Still, after directing a diamond lead, even on 3-2 trumps and 4-2 or better hearts (not a gimme by any means), you can draw 3 trump and run hearts but you only have 11 tricks: 5 trumps including a ruff, 5 hearts, and 1 diamond.
If partner has more - good trumps, a fitting heart honor, and another card which will make 6S a good contract opposite this hand, he knows his hand is good fitting and will make an encouraging move over 1H-1S-3S. Now you are well placed to bid slam, having a maximum for your 3S bid.
xeno123, on 2016-November-01, 12:02, said:
I will note that your suggested line would have failed against the actual distribution of the hand (which was pretty vanilla).
I will post the full distribution of the actual hand later - just didn't want to bias the discussion of the best line.
You already did suggest something about the hand.
Nige's line was quite good IMO. Unless you assume diamonds are 3-3 (maybe doubleton KQ helps), you have to make some assumption about the
♥K. The fact that you told us that Nige's line fails against vanilla distribution implies that a line involving a ruffing finesse works better. However, that doesn't make it a better play. Nige is trying to make the hand when diamonds aren't 3-3 and I think that his line is as good as anything I came up with.
What's the best line here? And do people agree with the splinter, which was a bit light by GIB's standards?
Most players were in four spades making five, with a couple of others in six going down one. Six was makeable as the cards lay.