[sceptic]

no singletons but all other suits covered no losers ( well one but you can discard it on a honour card in one of the other suits)

is it ok to be in a slam with the following in trumps

Kxxxx

J109x

also if you are in slam, what is best way of playing trumps

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

sure, although I probably would ask about the
Queen of trumps, if I had a chance, and intending
to stay out of the slam in case the Queen is not
on board. (*)
But than the missing Key card may have been an
Ace out side the trump suit.

But this is not always possible, e.g. in case hearts
are trumps.

You are able to play the suit for 1 looser 50%
of the time, I believe it is slightly less than 50%,
but add the 8 and you have 50%.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: If you know, you are missing a key card and the
Queen of trumps, a small slam will quite often be only
50%, and it is a good policy to stay out of the slam in
this case.

[zasanya]

I do not mind 50% slams.
I would play J intending to finesse.If LHO hitches I may change my mind.

[paulg]

P_Marlowe, on Aug 24 2007, 08:34 AM, said:

PS: If you know, you are missing a key card and the
Queen of trumps, a small slam will quite often be only
50%, and it is a good policy to stay out of the slam in
this case.

As Marlowe says, you generally wish to stay out of slam if you are missing a keycard and the trump queen.

Whereas the breakpoint for bidding vulnerable games is about 37%, for slams it is 50%. regardless of vulnerability. So bidding slams on a finesse is an even proposition.

However, if you think a slam is on a finesse then it is almost always worse than that! OK, you may not get 7-0 breaks very often, but all these extreme distributions can only reduce the odds.

On the other hand, if the missing keycard is the trump king then you should probably be bidding the slam if you have all the intermediates.

Finally, this suit plays for 4 tricks 45% of the time unless you have the spade eight (when it goes up to 50%).

Paul