[Winstonm]

Scoring: IMP

Contract 4H by North.

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Opening lead is the diamond King. Trick 2 is the diamond Queen. overtaken by the Ace. The 2 of spades is returned.

Should you risk making the safety play in hearts - which 4/1 break do you guard against?

Winston

[pclayton]

I think its sort of a guess.

If you choose to safety the hand, the best play is a low ♥ to the board (unless you get a Quack on your right), followed by a low heart back to the 10. I pick all 4-1's that I can.

This is only wrong if RHO has ♠x and ♥Hxx. Would he make this shift with ♥Qxx? Probably not. So I only worry about ♥Jxx; pretty specific holding.

I like the safety as suggested.

[Winstonm]

Jlall, on Jan 7 2006, 02:17 PM, said:

can't we just test spades? I'm not sure I understand. I would play AK of spades. If someone doesn't showout I can claim. Assuming someone does showout I'll double finesse the heart.

Contract is 4H, not 4S.

Question is: do you bang down the AK of hearts, giving up on the safety play, or do you take the safety play in hearts, risking the spade ruff when the hearts are 3/2 and the spades 4/1? Of course, the standard safety play with this heart holding is Ace first then low toward the 10.

Winston

[fred]

Winstonm, on Jan 7 2006, 08:11 PM, said:

Jlall, on Jan 7 2006, 02:17 PM, said:

can't we just test spades? I'm not sure I understand. I would play AK of spades. If someone doesn't showout I can claim. Assuming someone does showout I'll double finesse the heart.

Contract is 4H, not 4S.

Question is: do you bang down the AK of hearts, giving up on the safety play, or do you take the safety play in hearts, risking the spade ruff when the hearts are 3/2 and the spades 4/1? Of course, the standard safety play with this heart holding is Ace first then low toward the 10.

Winston

There is safer play than Ace of hearts then low toward the 10:

After Ace of hearts, return to a club and lead a low heart intending to play the 9 if West follows small.

This line is necessary if RHO has any hand with a small singleton heart.

That happens over 8% of the time (3/5 x 1/2 x 28%).

Playing the AK of hearts is necessary when RHO began with Qx or Jx of hearts along with 4 spades. This is harder to compute because dependent probabilities are involved (ie the odds of spades being 1-4 has an impact on the odds of RHO being dealt various heart holdings and vice versa).

If you ignore this factor, RHO will have 4 spades about 14% of the time and 2 hearts including 1 honor about 20% of the time (6/10 x 1/2 x 68%). 14% of 20% is in the neighbourhood of 3%.

The actual number is somewhat higher due to the dependent probability issues mentioned above, but my instincts suggest that it will still be less than 8% (sorry no time to do the real math right now - also sorry in the not unlikely event that I made a mistake in the above calculations).

So I think the safety play in hearts is the correct play.

Don't worry if you can't do problems like this one in your head - this is not exactly mission critical stuff in terms of winning bridge.

In the real world, the spade that RHO returned might be relevent. For example, if he returned a small spot card, it would be reasonable to infer that he was not dealt the J109x of spades. This would make the safety play in hearts even more attractive.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Jlall, on Jan 7 2006, 08:58 PM, said:

I don't understand why RHO would overtake and return a spade into the AKxx looking at xx of clubs in the real world if he didn't have a stiff. This would be a very strange play. I suppose it would also be a strange play if he DID have a stiff though.

If RHO has a stiff spade the safety play in hearts is free (because you finesse into the safe hand).

In any case, I agree that only a strong player would realize the need to overtake and shift to a spade from 4 when holding Qx and (especially) Jx in hearts. Besides that, LHO sometimes leads a stiff spade. The bidding might be relevent too since it might put RHO in a position to know that declarer has the AKQ of clubs. Then it wouldn't take a genius to at least consider shifting to a spade despite how "natural" it is to play a club.

I was looking at this as mostly a math problem.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Jlall, on Jan 7 2006, 09:20 PM, said:

heh we suck... south is dummy Glad I wasn't alone in that mistake... Anyways with AKQ of clubs in dummy and the spade Q I think that overtaking and playing a spade is normal so I would definitely take the safety play...it was more interesting when south was declarer lol.

Yeah we suck

The math aspect of this is still the same, but I agree the table aspect is less fun with North as declarer.

For those of you who want to think about the math aspects from a North point of view, just switch around all references to LHO and RHO in my earlier post.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Free]

I don't know how the bidding went, but isn't it possible that RHO has 4 ♠s and that he's trying to get his partner a ruff? Ok, so lefty didn't lead his singleton, but that was necessary to create a problem for declarer. Why would RHO play ♠ to AK7x when there's ♣xx and he doesn't have a honour?

I'd just cash ♥AK, hoping this is safer.

[Fluffy]

I would play ♥A and low to the 10. But now I read it I realise playing low to the 9 is better.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Fred: There is safer play than Ace of hearts then low toward the 10:

After Ace of hearts, return to a club and lead a low heart intending to play the 9 if West follows small.

I am not mathematically inclined, so allow me to put this into terms which I can better understand.

My play, of Ace and low to the 10 would lose if either opponent had a singleton spade and 3 hearts; however, by crossing and leading low to the 9, I eliminate 1 of those chances and would only lose if RHO had 3 hearts and a singleton spade.

Therefore, regardless of percentages, this play is twice as good. Good advice.

Winston