[awm]

Say you are defending a spade contract. At trick one, partner leads the ♣3 (third/fifth leads). Dummy shows up with:

♣J987

You hold:

♣QT2

Declarer calls for the seven at trick one, what's your play?

Does it effect things if you're pretty sure declarer will hold exactly three clubs from the auction?

[skjaeran]

Jlall, on Aug 9 2007, 10:46 PM, said:

Yes the queen is a standard play here that nobody makes. It applies with KTx as well.

Make that very few.... else agree completely.

[awm]

I was kibitzing this hand at a table of BBO stars. The actual club position was:

---

When the club was lead, east played the queen (obvious here) and declarer won the trick. Later in the hand, declarer had to decide between a 100% line for making his contract versus playing for an overtrick by finessing west for the club ten (going down if the club ten was off). Declarer risked it all for the overtrick.

Just goes to show how few players (even at the expert level) consider such a falsecard I guess.

[ArtK78]

I assume that declarer took the finesse. In that case, he made the WRONG play based on the count card - the opening leader, playing 3rd/5th best leads, could not have 4 clubs on the lead of the 3.

By the way, how can you draw the conclusion that declarer made the right or wrong play based on the proposition that RHO would or would not have played the Q from QTx? He did not hold QTx. Now you can launch into a restricted choice argument - since he played the Q he may or may not hold the 10, however, if he does not hold the 10 then his choice is restricted.

The fact that declarer finessed does not mean that he did not consider the possibility that RHO might have the 10. Declarer just decided that he did not.

Feel free to continue the argument, but I don't believe your original point is made or not made by this example.

[awm]

First, here's why the queen is the right card. There are two likely positions in the suit:

---

Here declarer can play the suit for four tricks. All he has to do is double hook us for the QT. If we play the ten at trick one, declarer has no choice but to finesse us (correctly) for the queen. Playing the queen at trick one gives declarer a losing option: he can play opening leader for having underlead from T543 and finesse for the ten.

---

Here the ten is the right double-dummy play. But if we play the queen, will declarer really try a club to the jack the next time the suit is played, or will he play opening-leader for the ten and us for a possible KQ2 or Q2?

On to the actual hand where east held only doubleton club. Declarer is playing 3♠ at IMP scoring and has a 100% line for his contract. All he had to do was cash out. Instead, he took the club finesse, risking losing a club trick and going down. The benefit was that if he could play clubs for four tricks, he could discard a side loser and make an overtrick. So declarer risked the contract on the reasoning that east must not have the ♣T for the trick one queen play.

Admittedly, in some of these positions one can try to read the opening leader's count card to deduce the position. But many pairs are somewhat vague about what exactly they lead from three small cards in any case. While it seems clear that declarer's play of finessing the clubs is odds-on, this is not a BAM or MP board. The risk-reward ratio is way out of whack unless declarer is pretty sure east would not play the queen from QTx (or that west would always lead third best from all three-card holdings regardless of honors in the suit).

So my point is: this is a situation where a falescard (playing the queen) is correct. But even at the expert level, very few people will make this play at the table. This is true to the degree that a world class declarer (against world class opponents) will place serious odds (like 5:1) against this falsecard having been made against him.

[cherdano]

Adam, against expert defenders, I think the odds are already way better than 5:1 that the openingg lead is not a falsecard.

(Edited for clarity)

[Trumpace]

In the actual situation where declarer finessed...

If LHO led the correct count card (what Jlall was talking about), Since RHO holds Q2 exactly, the situation is pretty clear to declarer once the Q appears on the first trick.

Why should he even consider the false card? This assumes both LHO and RHO are false carding on the first trick!

[ArtK78]

Jlall:

The original post says the ♣3 is the opening lead. Nothing posted after that contradicted that fact.

You don't have to agree with me, but I can read. Why you insist on attacking me is beyond my comprehension.

If the actual spot card lead was not the ♣3, then that should be spelled out in the subsequent post.

Adam:

As was previously pointed out, for the false card to work, declarer has to assume that the opening lead was also a false card, since the lead of the ♣3 would not be made from an original holding of 10543.

[cnszsun]

You will need to have a very strong partner to make such false card, because he has to duck smoothly at 2nd round with Kxx in hand.

[FrancesHinden]

cnszsun, on Aug 10 2007, 03:20 AM, said:

You will need to have a very strong partner to make such false card, because he has to duck smoothly at 2nd round with Kxx in hand.

Yes.
I admit I had not thought about this layout in detail before, but now I'm worried about two things when partner has actually led from Kxx

- If the Q10x hand gets the led, they cannot attack the suit further
- Partner will be unsure if we have Qxx or Q10x; if the former he needs to cash the king (or not play the suit at all), if the latter he needs to underlead the king.

And now I know why I hadn't thought of this before: partner rarely leads from 3 low in a suit. So you need to work out in tempo at trick one that this layout is actually likely.

[kenrexford]

A play that has contextual merits but alternative contextual liabilities is neither standard nor mandatory. It is in the right context a good play.

[asc]

________ J987

K6543 ________ Q102

________ A


in this case we play ♣2 and the declarer can not play for another ♣ trick (if he need it). Just for the record

[FrancesHinden]

When he has singleton ace, he can't anyway.

This layout is similar but more dangerous:

---

Partner leads the 3 and, even assuming we know he does not have the King, we don't know if declarer has AK2 (play the Queen) or AK doubleton (when playing the Q looks very silly indeed).

[asc]

Partners lead can be from K6543 -we play falsecard Q♣, Partner takes the next trick and because he "knows"where is ♣10 he play ♣K- his idea is - if I'm singleton i'll ruff third round , if I'm with 2 cards I can ruff high third round. That's more than hilarious-now declarer have 3 tricks in♣ (♣10 drop on ♣J)