[Hanoi5]

Scoring: IMP

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Let us just say you got to 6♥ without adverse bidding (except your own ) and receive a diamond lead.

Spoiler

I took my Ace, crossed to the Spade Ace, played Jack of Hearts and overtook it with my Ace (got only 2 small cards) and procedeed to play a diamond spade cross-ruff, finding Jxxxx of spades to my left and ♥K and ♣K together for an endplay at the eleventh trick

Was my line nearer 20 or 50%?

[ArtK78]

Seems very reasonable. Your line combines the chance of finding the ♥K singleton with the added chances of KQx of diamonds in either hand (hardly likely to be in the opening leader's hand) with the chance of Kxx or KJ of spades coming down, along with the final chance of the ♥Kx and ♣K being in the same hand. Calculating the odds is rather involved, and I am not going to attempt to do so, but your line is clearly better than finding Kx of hearts onside.

[Free]

Could be improved by playing a small ♥ to the Ace instead of ♥J

[dcvetkov]

I would try to develop spades for a club discard.... But i think there will be a guess whether to try to pin Jack of spades, or ruff out Kxx of spades... If you guess wrong. andd there is a trump loser you may go down.

[awm]

I prefer the heart finesse line. Some things that haven't been pointed out:

(1) On your line, it's not enough to find ♥k and ♣k together. If the person with ♥k can overruff a spade or diamond at any point he probably still has time for a pointed suit exit without giving a ruff and discard.

(2) On the heart finesse line, if ♥Kx is on you are almost cold -- at this point any 4-3 spade break will bring you home, or 5-2 spades with the club king and long spades together, or a 5-2 break with either of the spade jack or king in the doubleton hand.

(3) If you take the heart finesse and it loses, and a trump comes back, you can still make if the spade king comes down in three rounds.

[inquiry]

Free, on Apr 10 2008, 07:03 AM, said:

Could be improved by playing a small ♥ to the Ace instead of ♥J

How? If RHO shows out, float the jack. IF LHO shows out on the ACE, you still lose one (BTW, with KT9 of hearts, ducking the JACK is quite a Grosvenor gambit).

[Hanoi5]

Quote

I prefer the heart finesse line. Some things that haven't been pointed out:

(1) On your line, it's not enough to find ♥k and ♣k together. If the person with ♥k can overruff a spade or diamond at any point he probably still has time for a pointed suit exit without giving a ruff and discard.

(2) On the heart finesse line, if ♥Kx is on you are almost cold -- at this point any 4-3 spade break will bring you home, or 5-2 spades with the club king and long spades together, or a 5-2 break with either of the spade jack or king in the doubleton hand.

(3) If you take the heart finesse and it loses, and a trump comes back, you can still make if the spade king comes down in three rounds.

(1)But I still make it if ♠KJ is doubleton or the K third.
(2)But I lose against singleton K in West and against the present condition.
(3)And I make it anyway after putting up the Ace with those conditions.

[awm]

Both lines are fine if the spades behave. So assume they don't.

It seems like the difference is basically:

Heart king onside doubleton (2/8) OR some fraction of heart king onside third (1/8)

versus

Heart king offside stiff (1/8) OR (heart king doubleton (4/8) AND endplay works)

So the question is really:

(1) How much better is the finessing line when hearts are ♥KT9 onside?

(2) How often does this endplay really work?

It seems clear that if the endplay is around 1/2, the line of playing heart ace is better, whereas if the endplay is more like 1/4, then the finesse is better. If it's in between then we might have to answer question (1).

Certainly the endplay needs ♥K with ♣K. But that is not really enough -- if ♥K is onside with three-card spades, then this person can overruff the fourth spade and return a diamond (unless he has 3235/3226 shape in which case he's out of diamonds). Also, if the spades break 5-2 it seems like this line lands in the wrong hand (you are in dummy with Qxx club left after ruffing the fourth and final spade, and hand contains Ax club and a trump). So my feel is that this endplay is a lot closer to 1/4 than 1/2 to work out.

[Hanoi5]

So I was just lucky?