[pclayton]

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You play in 4♠ with the opponents silent. LHO leads the ♥Q. Plan the play for the 1st few tricks and I'll give some continuations later.

[Halo]

I'd win the heart and lead a small spade to the Jack.

[dake50]

Can I keep losers to CA +SAQ? Start spades immediately.

[mikeh]

I can afford to lose 2 trumps and the club A. I can take a pitch on the heart K, but should it be the slow club loser or the possible diamond loser?

If I take the diamond pitch early, and LHO wins the first club, and fires a spade through, they may draw 3 rounds of trump before I can ruff a club, and I will fail when the diamond hook might have worked all along.

But, if I defer the pitch, they can't draw 3 rounds of trump without letting me back in dumy.

So I win the heart lead and lead the club Q. I am intending, if they let me, to cash a couple of clubs and lead the 4th. What I do then depends on what has happened so far. BTW, if LHO wins the club and plays A and a spade, I don't hook.

[pclayton]

RHO wins the AC and plays trump to LHO. LHO plays a trump. You rise K and RHO shows out. Continue.

[gnasher]

It's gone: heart lead, CQ to East's ace, trump to West's ace, trump to dummy's king, East showing out.

I could ruff a club in dummy and throw a diamond on a heart, or I could throw a club on a heart and take the diamond finesse. At the table, I would, if being unusually thorough, have reasoned thus:

Of the 21 non-trumps, LHO has 9 and RHO has 12. The odds of RHO's having DQ are 12:9, or about 59%.

The a priori probabilities of the relevant club distributions were:
4=3/3=4 62%
2=5 15%
5=2 15%

So without the trump break, the probability of LHO having at least three clubs would have been 77/92, or 84%. The 4-1 break will have reduced this figure, but I can't believe that this is sufficient to make the diamond finesse better than the club ruff, so I play to ruff my club loser in dummy, then cash HA (even if LHO turns out to be 4xx5).

The subject of this thread suggests that there's a bit more to this deal than a choice between ruffing a loser and taking a finesse, but I can't see what. Have I missed something?

[pclayton]

gnasher, on Feb 3 2008, 03:44 AM, said:

It's gone: heart lead, CQ to East's ace, trump to West's ace, trump to dummy's king, East showing out.

I could ruff a club in dummy and throw a diamond on a heart, or I could throw a club on a heart and take the diamond finesse. At the table, I would, if being unusually thorough, have reasoned thus:

Of the 21 non-trumps, LHO has 9 and RHO has 12. The odds of RHO's having DQ are 12:9, or about 59%.

The a priori probabilities of the relevant club distributions were:
4=3/3=4 62%
2=5 15%
5=2 15%

So without the trump break, the probability of LHO having at least three clubs would have been 77/92, or 84%. The 4-1 break will have reduced this figure, but I can't believe that this is sufficient to make the diamond finesse better than the club ruff, so I play to ruff my club loser in dummy, then cash HA (even if LHO turns out to be 4xx5).

The subject of this thread suggests that there's a bit more to this deal than a choice between ruffing a loser and taking a finesse, but I can't see what. Have I missed something?

No you haven't missed anything, although I realized during the 2nd half that RHO actually revoked LOL.

What happened at the table was this:

I took the ♥AK (I thought it might get stranded if I didn't - perhaps wrong) and tried the ♣Q. RHO won (LHO showed an odd #) and played a diamond. I won and tried club, club pitching a diamond, planning on ruffing a diamond in dummy and pitching the 4th club and just giving up 2♠ and a ♣.

RHO ruffed the club and LHO ruffed a diamond. I later misguessed spades for -2.

RHO was actually 1=2=6=4 (!). It was made at the other table.

This was the main reason we were stuck 9 at the half. The last 8 boards we ran off 48 unanswered to win by 23.