[inquiry]

Scoring: IMPS

1N 2N
3♦ 4♦
4♠ 4N
5♦ 7♦
7N Pass

2NT = ♦
3♦ = super accept

---

Heart 6 opening lead to KING and EAST plays the ♥5. Opponents lead 2/4 leads.

At this point, with 6♦, 3♥, 2♣ and 1♠ you have 12 tricks. What lines of play do you see? Either black suit finesse obviously if guessed right will see you home. Is it better to play for singleton Spade King then hook clubs, or doubleton club queen then hook spades (if no luck in other suit). How about a vienna coup, cash spade ACE and use spade NINE as threat against an opponent (presumably WEST who holds ♠KT and ♣Q? Or cash ♠Ace and use the spade queen as a threat against EAST for a showup squeeze should WEST have doubleton club Q

Chance of doubleton or singleton club Queen is just less than 5%. Chance for singleton spade King is less than 1%. So the combined play, tryign to drop the club Queen then if necessary hook the spade king begins to look good. But on the play some "useful" stuff happens...

T2. ♦K-♦-♦-♠T

You determine the spade ten is a postive signal in ♠ confirmed by subsequent play, so the ♠ hook appears to be off....

T3. ♦T-♦J=♦A=♠2
T4. ♦x-♠4-♦x-♦x

When you cas diamonds, West throw one more spade, the ♣8 then ♣2 and finally another small ♠. East throws the ♠7 and then the ♥4.

To trick 8, you lead a spade to the ACE, east discards the ♥9 and WEST the spade 5. Only ♠K is out now. You cash the ♥AJ East follows once and discards a club, West follows to both.

The hand is now cold. If EAST has club Queen, finessee, if WEST has club queen, he only has two clubs left and it will drop.

Considerations.

1. West signalled high low in clubs, but would he volunteer that he had the club queen setting himself up for the vienna coup?
2. Clubs were 4-4 so each opponent is equally likely to have the club Queen based on clbus. (west 6-3-0-4, East 1-4-4-4).
3. West might have choose to lead a club from xxxx as opposed to a heart from Txx so restricted choice might apply, making west more likely to have the queen.
4. If it matters, West is a BBO gold star, so is south.
5. If you hook and are wrong, you are down two. If he play for the vienna coup and are wrong you are down one.
6. Making a squeeze is sooooo much more fun than a simple finessee.

If West has the club Queen, what do you think of WEST's defense. If West lacks the club queen what do you think of it. Should west have ever shown the spade King if he had both black cards.

How do you play and does WEST club "signal" alter you line (assuming you discovered the ♠King but WEST played clubs up the line rather than hi-lo).

[Apollo81]

I would guess LHO had the ♣Q.

I think restricted choice on the opening lead is the strongest inference here.

I don't know how strong the following inference is. I suspect it's not very strong. I think the previous one is stronger.

LHO signalled honestly in spades. He basically knew that you'd discover the position of the ♠K without taking the finesse so his spade signal was irrelevant. Thus he is making himself look like an "honest" defender and is now trying to dupe you into believing that he is singalling honestly in clubs as well.

[bid_em_up]

I don't think West should have shown the spade K at all. But, since we now know he has it, why did he lead a heart from a 6-3-0-4 holding?

Unless the club holding was Qxxx and he didnt want to lead from it either.

I think you should play for the drop.

[cherdano]

We opened an overstrength 1N. I think that LHO is signalling honestly because if we don't have ♣J, they can beat just by not messing up their discards.

[Apollo81]

cherdano, on Mar 8 2007, 11:25 AM, said:

We opened an overstrength 1N. I think that LHO is signalling honestly because if we don't have ♣J, they can beat just by not messing up their discards.

East has no choice but to keep clubs, and West knows that.

[Fluffy]

First I'll call director because tehre are 2 ♥5.

After realising that I missed my glasses again at the car, I'll look again and realise one of them is ♥4 or ♥7 so I'll think about the deal.

First aproach before I think it deeper: playing ♠A and running all tricks might bring you home when there are very bad breaks in a black suit.

EDIT: wrong, this doesn't work, Best % line seems to cash !cAK and hope the Q falls, then try ♠ finese. There must be something better or the good lord wouldn't have given me the ♠9

[cherdano]

Apollo81, on Mar 8 2007, 09:29 AM, said:

cherdano, on Mar 8 2007, 11:25 AM, said:

We opened an overstrength 1N. I think that LHO is signalling honestly because if we don't have ♣J, they can beat just by not messing up their discards.

East has no choice but to keep clubs, and West knows that.

I am assuming East is not-so-competent and that West knows that. (The spade discard makes no sense to me.) Still, maybe you are right.

[Free]

I'll finesse. If LHO is really a star, and if he had ♣Q, he would've set it doubleton a long time ago. You can easily see the squeeze coming, and why would you signal for ♠ if you don't have any hopes for partner to get a trick. This all may be deceptive, you can always start to think "my opponent thinks that I think that he thinks that he thinks he would've done ...". So how many levels are there already?

[mikeh]

Sorry, Ben.. but you have a 14 card ♠ suit. You have him pitching ♠s at tricks 2-5, then 2♣s, then another ♠ and then he follows to the ♠A, leaving him, after playing 6 small ♠s, with the K. I suspect you meant that he pitched 4♠s, 2♣s and followed to 1♠ and that the suit was indeed 6-1.

Ordinarily, I'd vote to revoke the gold star of any player who went out of their way to show the ♠K early.. but your weird 1N (weird if 15-17, and you did not specify) can persuade a defender that his partner will have a little something... say the ♠Q... and, at the time he pitched the 10, maybe declarer held AJx Qxx AJxx Axx.. so he wanted to ensure that his not-so-reliable partner didn't cling to the ♠Q.

As it is, I would like to be at the table to assess whether LHO is a truly honest carder or, if not, to guess just how many levels of deviousness I should allow.

I expect to play for the squeeze on several grounds:

1. if he is a truly honest carder, and doesn't deserve his gold star.. then he has told me how to play the hand

2. If he is two levels of deviousness into the game, he has told me that he has the ♣Q and he will expect me to disbelieve him, so he will have it

3. he made a dangerous lead from 10xx where it might well have been fatal: dummy with KJ9 and me with A8xx is an obvious example. A lead from xxxx is safer. But from Qxxx it is not.. this is the strong technical argument, and I'd need a compelling reason not to follow it

4. Squeezes are artistic.. anyone can take a finesse.

[han]

I'd like to be there, I'm certain that I'd be able to misread the situation if I was actually at the table. How good west is is very important, the level of the stars varies greatly.

mikeh, on Mar 8 2007, 01:44 PM, said:

4. Squeezes are artistic.. anyone can take a finesse.

The second poster to mention this in this thread, how disappointing.

[mikeh]

Hannie, on Mar 8 2007, 02:57 PM, said:

I'd like to be there, I'm certain that I'd be able to misread the situation if I was actually at the table. How good west is is very important, the level of the stars varies greatly.

mikeh, on Mar 8 2007, 01:44 PM, said:

4. Squeezes are artistic.. anyone can take a finesse.

The second poster to mention this in this thread, how disappointing.

It may be disappointing but it is a real-life factor. My (WC) partner, in a live event a couple of months ago, had to choose between a finesse and playing LHO to have been squeezed, when the critcial suit was counted out to have started 4-4 and the bidding afforded no clue whatseover: neither opp would have done anything differently regardless of who held the Q of that suit. We were in a vulnerable, thin slam, missed at the other table (and rating to be missed) and the scoring was VP in a 7 board match, so this was an important hand. He used the 'squeeze is artistic' factor to decide.. and, no, the opps had not given anything away in terms of tempo. Fortunately, it was an aesthetically pleasing deal

[inquiry]

Jlall, on Mar 8 2007, 03:47 PM, said:

One can use whatever crazy rule or superstition they like if something is completely 50/50 and it doesn't matter. They could even literally flip a coin, that'd be cool. Rarely are things 50/50 though, and if they arent things like squeezes are teh pwnz0rz shouldn't be a factor.

Since clubs are 4-4 it appears to be 50-50. But what implication, if any, can be drawn from the choice of a ♥ lead instead of a ♣? Would restricted choice apply and if it did, doesn't that suggest WEST is more likely to have the Queen of clubs than EAST.

[the hog]

Jlall, on Mar 9 2007, 03:47 AM, said:

One can use whatever crazy rule or superstition they like if something is completely 50/50 and it doesn't matter. They could even literally flip a coin, that'd be cool. Rarely are things 50/50 though, and if they arent things like squeezes are teh pwnz0rz shouldn't be a factor.

They couldn't flip a coin Justin. That would be using a mechanical aid.

[inquiry]

Ok, West had all the keycards.. ♠KT and ♣Q. This hand is one where I think declarer has no chance to get the play right without great help from EW.

For one thing, to play for a squeeze requires the same hand to hold both KT of spades and the Q of clubs. Needless to say, all three key cards in one hand is, well, significantly against the odds compared to the simple finessee.

West, looknig at five hcp, and knowing south has around 17 hcp lnows partner has around a QUEEN at most. I assume the play in hearts informed WEST that the heart queen was with south. That is 6♦, 1♠, 2♣, and 3♥ tricks. So WEST's goal should be to keep declarer in the dark about the location of spot cards. IF west throws a low club, some low hearts, and just a few spades, declearer would no doubt go by the path of less resistance, and try to cash both clubs, then rely on the spade finessee for down one. I can't see the play going any other way.

Once WEST shouted to the world that he has the spade KING and in the process throw the ♠T to make it 100% clear that the spade 9 was a threat against him, the vienna coup against west goes from something like 11% or so chance to no worse than 50-50. And as I think it was mikeh above, with clubs divided 4-4 there is some restricted choice implication based on the choice of the opening lead.

On this hand, there also seems to be no reason to flip a coin if it is true 50-50. If you hook and are wrong, you lose 200 points, if you play the ACE and are wrong, you are -100 points. So the rewards for being right are the same, but the penalty for being wrong is twice as bad if you hook than if you rise with the ACE.

All four players were gold stars, I was a kibitizer and before the play, suggested in kibitzer chat that the correct line was cash clubs then hook, but that the vienna coup would work by why would he find it.... the answer was the defense pointed the way.... Once declearer played spade to the ACE it was clear he had the hand solved.