[pclayton]

Scoring: MP

---

You play in 6♣ after this auction:

South....West....North....East
1♣...pass....1♥....2♦
pass...pass....2♠....pass
3♣...3♦...5♦...Double
5♥....pass...6♣...AP

LHO leads the ♥5.

One round of trump gathers the ♦9 from RHO. So much for that idea. You can choose to win the trick in either hand.

Now what?

[jdonn]

Edit (didn't see MPs and I mocked Phil )

[awm]

Well I've reached a good contract and dodged the spade lead. I don't feel like I necessarily need to make seven to get a good board.

Anyways my plan would be:

Win the heart lead, ruff a heart high, club to dummy, ruff another heart high, club to dummy pulling the last trump. Cash the heart king pitching spade, and if the heart jack is good pitch my other spade and cross ruff. Otherwise ruff the heart jack and play a spade towards dummy hoping LHO ducks his ace.

The only other chances I can see involve risking the contract for the uptrick, which seems silly.

[pclayton]

SORRY...... After I read Adam's post I realized I put the hand in wrong.

Its corrected now. S was 2236 not 2137.

[jdonn]

pclayton, on Nov 15 2007, 07:26 PM, said:

SORRY...... After I read Adam's post I realized I put the hand in wrong.

Its corrected now. S was 2236 not 2137.

Haha! Mocking justified.

[Fluffy]

cash 2 hearts and ruff a third high

[whereagles]

Fluffy, on Nov 16 2007, 09:28 AM, said:

cash 2 hearts and ruff a third high

ditto. we'll carry on from there.

[dburn]

Not sure about all this. Why has West led dummy's suit? I'm going to draw trumps ending in hand and play a second heart. If West follows, I will finesse the jack. If not, I will play East for the singleton ace of spades.

[Walddk]

dburn, on Nov 16 2007, 12:54 PM, said:

Not sure about all this. Why has West led dummy's suit? I'm going to draw trumps ending in hand and play a second heart. If West follows, I will finesse the jack. If not, I will play East for the singleton ace of spades.

The line I would adopt too. The deal seems familiar. Did we have it on vugraph not so long ago?

By the way, when is someone going to create a template for bidding? It is very difficult to read Phil's auction properly, and we have had lots of examples where the auction makes little sense because the bids do not appear under the appropriate players.

That's why I always take and explain one bid at a time in the text below the diagram.

I am no programmer and I don't know how difficult it is, but I don't think it is brain surgery. Here is an example of how it is done on a Danish web site:

http://www.netbridge.dk/bridge/discuss/tre...sp?message=3264

You are asked if you want a template, and if you say "Ja", you get an empty template and click on the bids you want for each player in turn. This is the nice result you see when the auction is complete.

Roland

[pclayton]

dburn, on Nov 16 2007, 02:54 AM, said:

Not sure about all this. Why has West led dummy's suit? I'm going to draw trumps ending in hand and play a second heart. If West follows, I will finesse the jack. If not, I will play East for the singleton ace of spades.

This is how I started.

RHO pitches 2 more ♦'s on the trump. When you play a heart up. LHO ditches a diamond and sloughs another diamond when you ruff a heart to hand.

It doesn't make sense to me to play RHO for the ♠A stiff. This means LHO passed over 1♣ with ♠QTxxxx and a singleton. Perhaps this is possible because evidently these opponents are gun-shy about bidding since they couldn't crawl past the 2 level with their 10 diamonds at green, so perhaps this is possible.

Anyway, when you play a spade up, LHO flies with the Ace and plays a diamond.

[Echognome]

Walddk, on Nov 16 2007, 03:28 AM, said:

By the way, when is someone going to create a template for bidding? It is very difficult to read Phil's auction properly, and we have had lots of examples where the auction makes little sense because the bids do not appear under the appropriate players.

Note that there's also a template on http://forums.bridgetalk.com

However, I think we stick with the convention of opponent's bids in parenthesis () and ours bids without, it's a little easier to read. I also like hyphens - in between bids rather than dots...

So for the above, we know the dealer started with South, so I would write it as:

1♣ - (P) - 1♥ - (2♦)
P - (P) - 2♠ - (P)
3♣ - (3♦) - 5♦ - (Dbl)
5♥ - (P) - 6♣ - All Pass

Which I personally find a little easier to read. I agree that a template would help with the spacing.

[dburn]

pclayton, on Nov 16 2007, 10:59 AM, said:

dburn, on Nov 16 2007, 02:54 AM, said:

Not sure about all this. Why has West led dummy's suit? I'm going to draw trumps ending in hand and play a second heart. If West follows, I will finesse the jack. If not, I will play East for the singleton ace of spades.

This is how I started.

RHO pitches 2 more ♦'s on the trump. When you play a heart up. LHO ditches a diamond and sloughs another diamond when you ruff a heart to hand.

It doesn't make sense to me to play RHO for the ♠A stiff. This means LHO passed over 1♣ with ♠QTxxxx and a singleton. Perhaps this is possible because evidently these opponents are gun-shy about bidding since they couldn't crawl past the 2 level with their 10 diamonds at green, so perhaps this is possible.

Anyway, when you play a spade up, LHO flies with the Ace and plays a diamond.

It may not make sense to you to play RHO for the singleton ♠A, but if he does not have it, then West has failed to raise 2♦ to 3♦ with ♠A, a singleton heart, and four-card (at least) diamond support. To me, that is at least as remarkable as the seeming impossibility (to you) that someone would fail to overcall on a two count.

Still, I would not have been confident enough of my analysis to lead a low spade from dummy at trick six. Like you, I would have crossed to hand with a heart ruff and led a low spade. West, who does not know that he could have beaten me by playing any spade apart from the ace (I would have ducked the queen) has played the ace, and now I need to consider whether his actions are more consistent with ♠Axxxx ♥x ♦xxxx ♣xxx or with the same hand with the queen of spades instead of a low card.

Since it is hard to draw any conclusions from the antics of this particular West, I will go with the a priori odds - West has four non-ace spades and East two, so I will play West for the queen. But whoever mocked you for setting this problem had a point: it does not make a whole lot of sense to ask how one would play a hand when the opponents have clearly acted irrationally at almost every turn.

[pclayton]

dburn, on Nov 18 2007, 03:18 AM, said:

pclayton, on Nov 16 2007, 10:59 AM, said:

dburn, on Nov 16 2007, 02:54 AM, said:

Not sure about all this. Why has West led dummy's suit? I'm going to draw trumps ending in hand and play a second heart. If West follows, I will finesse the jack. If not, I will play East for the singleton ace of spades.

This is how I started.

RHO pitches 2 more ♦'s on the trump. When you play a heart up. LHO ditches a diamond and sloughs another diamond when you ruff a heart to hand.

It doesn't make sense to me to play RHO for the ♠A stiff. This means LHO passed over 1♣ with ♠QTxxxx and a singleton. Perhaps this is possible because evidently these opponents are gun-shy about bidding since they couldn't crawl past the 2 level with their 10 diamonds at green, so perhaps this is possible.

Anyway, when you play a spade up, LHO flies with the Ace and plays a diamond.

It may not make sense to you to play RHO for the singleton ♠A, but if he does not have it, then West has failed to raise 2♦ to 3♦ with ♠A, a singleton heart, and four-card (at least) diamond support. To me, that is at least as remarkable as the seeming impossibility (to you) that someone would fail to overcall on a two count.

Still, I would not have been confident enough of my analysis to lead a low spade from dummy at trick six. Like you, I would have crossed to hand with a heart ruff and led a low spade. West, who does not know that he could have beaten me by playing any spade apart from the ace (I would have ducked the queen) has played the ace, and now I need to consider whether his actions are more consistent with ♠Axxxx ♥x ♦xxxx ♣xxx or with the same hand with the queen of spades instead of a low card.

Since it is hard to draw any conclusions from the antics of this particular West, I will go with the a priori odds - West has four non-ace spades and East two, so I will play West for the queen. But whoever mocked you for setting this problem had a point: it does not make a whole lot of sense to ask how one would play a hand when the opponents have clearly acted irrationally at almost every turn.

Yes I agree, this was a very weak player in a club game. Raising diamonds at the 1st round with a 5=1=4=3 seemed impossible.

I played card for card like this. I thought that LHO popping with the Ace was more likely if he held AQxxx rather than Axxxx which he actually had. Rising with the Ace is a Grosvenor.

We could drive ourselves nuts with, "Why didn't he make a jump overcall" or "why didn't he raise immediately with 4 diamonds", but we won't come to any conclusions.

In the important games I suppose we don't have to deal with such opponents except on Day 1

[dburn]

Well, at least neither you nor I fell into the trap of attempting to cash two rounds of hearts before drawing trumps. But this West must have a fairly low opinion of our bidding to lead a singleton against a slam holding an ace himself. It was important not to allow him to persist in his error by going down.