inquiry, on Apr 10 2007, 08:27 AM, said:
One needs a guiding principle when trying to decide on close hands. One principle might be, if all else is equal, the queen will be over the Jack so finesse it that way.
We all know there are times the queen doesn't lie over the jack (perhaps one might think that is about exactly 50% of the time), but even if you decide when it is a pure guess to always play it that way, we know that from the bidding, the distribution in other suits, and the card play, we might go against the rule that the queen is always there (if that is the way you decide to play).
Ben, I will assume you know where this theory is derived from, but maybe others don't. (I also can't tell if your post was tongue-in-cheek or not).
The "Queen lies over the Jack" comes from the principle of actually playing with physical cards and tossing them into the middle of the table (i.e. rubber bridge). Since people would normally cover an honor with an honor, then the Queen would "cover" the jack or "be over it".
In a shuffle and play environment, the theory was that the two cards were more likely to remain together in the shuffle/dealing the next deal, leaving the queen still lying over the jack on the next deal, and quite surprisingly, it worked more often than not, usually as a result of improper/inadequate shuffling.
This idiom has no merit in an online play environment, where a computer randomly generates the hands. Obviously, in this environment, it is 50% either way....unless there are other factors (bidding, distribution, etc) to indicate otherwise.