[hatchett]

My friend from England sent me this hand from the Evening Standard last week.

Scoring: IMP

---

You bid to 6♣ (uncontested) by south. The lead is the J♠ ducked. The ♠10 is continued which you ruff. The author suggests rather than drawing all the trumps and hoping ♥s play for four tricks, you should draw two rounds of trumps (all follow) and then play on the heart suit gaining when a hand with Jxxx♥ has only 2♣s. Can you find a better line than the author?

Hide answers to give others a chance.

[hrothgar]

hatchett, on Sep 15 2006, 11:17 PM, said:

You bid to 6♣ (uncontested) by south. The lead is the J♠ ducked. The ♠10 is continued which you ruff. The author suggests rather than drawing all the trumps and hoping ♥s play for four tricks, you should draw two rounds of trumps (all follow) and then play on the heart suit gaining when a hand with Jxxx♥ has only 2♣s.  Can you find a better line than the author?

Hide answers to give others a chance.

Spoiler

My first thought was a dummy reversal

Ruff the Spade and cross to dummy with a Heart
Ruff a Spade high and cross to dummy with a Diamond
Ruff a Spade high
King of Clubs
Low Club to the 10
Ace of Clubs
Cash your winners

You end up with

3 Club tricks
3 Club ruffs
3 Hearts
3 Diamonds

However, it looks like the heart suit will run roughly 70% [sic 54%] of of the time.
The 10 of Hearts is a big card. Looks like dummy reversal is about 2% worse sic [14% better] than drawing trump and praying...

[david_c]

Hey, this is really interesting, I think the author has the right play in the wrong situation:

Spoiler

Start by drawing two rounds of trumps with the king and ace.

Now if both opponents follow, you play for the dummy-reversal. It's virtually guaranteed to work once you know trumps are 3-2.

On the other hand, if trumps are breaking 4-1, now may be the time to go for the suggested play of playing on hearts before drawing any more trumps. (Though it seems quite close, since you can pick up Jxxxx on your right by drawing trumps first. I wouldn't like to have to work out the exact percentages. Change the ♥T to the nine and it becomes more clear.)

[ArcLight]

I must be overlooking something - I don't see how the hearts will produce 4 tricks over 70% of the time.

You make 4 hearts on all:
5-1 splits with a stiff jack (2.5%?)
4-2 splits with jack in the 2 card hand (1/3 of 48% = 16%)

Whats left is 3-3 (36%) vs 2-4 with RHO having 4 (half of 48% = 24%)

Play for the drop at that point

36+16+3 = 55%?



Or is the way to look at it the ratio between 36 and 24 3:2 = 60%

19% chance of making 4 after 2 cards, + (1 - .19 = 81% * 60%) = 48%

48 + 19 = 67%

[hrothgar]

ArcLight, on Sep 16 2006, 02:45 AM, said:

I must be overlooking something - I don't see how the hearts will produce 4 tricks over 70% of the time.

You overlooked the obvious, which is that I made a severe typo in my script... (had a "club" where a "heart" should be...

The new improved version came up with a 54% chance that the Hearts produce 4 tricks.

David's line looks better than the simple DR that I originally suggested

predeal

north SQ432, HA75, DKQ6, CAT8
south S8, HKQT2, DA73, CKQJ76

jackdrops =

hearts(east) == 3

or

(
hascard(east, JH) and
hearts(east) <=2
)

or

(
hascard(west, JH) and
hearts(west) <= 2
)

dummy_reversal =

clubs(east) == 2 or
clubs(east) ==3

action

average "jackdrops" jackdrops,
average "DR" dummy_reversal

[HeartA]

Spoiler

Cash CK at #3, C to CA (#4):
1) If C3-2, play dummy reversal. Ruff another S; D to K and ruff last S. H to K and draw last trump.
2) If C4-1, C10 to Q and draw last trump (pitch Sx from dummy). Cash 3 diamonds, HK and H to Ace. If HJ appears, you claim. If it doesn't, you may have a squeeze againt RHO or decide to finese HJ or play H3-3, depending on the discards of opps.

[FrancesHinden]

I agree with everyone else about what to do if all follow to two trumps ending on table. What is interesting is what if trumps are 4-1.

Spoiler

If West has 4 trumps, then hearts coming in or a major suit squeeze on East (who appears to have the AK of spades) looks very good odds. You will come down to

Q
Axx
-
-

-
KQ10x
-
-

and your RHO cannot have more than 3 hearts left.
This is now only going off when LHO started with a 3424 or 4414 distribution (and on the latter I assume he would have led a diamond)

If East has 4 trumps, together with at least AKxx of spades (according to the way the play in spades was described) then playing to ruff a heart in dummy definitely won´t work, so all you can do is hope the hearts run.

[SoTired]

Just some comments to add:

Spoiler

1) Hearts win 4 tricks 60.9% when J/Jx/Jxx drops OR Jxxxx/Jxxxxx in East because you can take the marked finesse by cashing king then ace and see West shows out.
2) Evening Standard bridge author missed simple dummy reversal?

[bid_em_up]

The best line is the one that wins the opening lead!! (ok, its a joke!!)

[whereagles]

This beginner/intermediate section is getting some expert stuff lately