[Trumpace]

You are South. You open 1S, and reach 4S after LHO overcalls 2H.

Scoring: IMP

Lead ♥K.

---

You get the ♥K lead. Plan the play.

As usual Adv/Adv+ please refrain from posting too soon, and please hide your responses if they contain spoilers.

[NickRW]

Spoiler

You have 8 top tricks, 6♠, 1♥, 1♣. You can always develop two more with ♣QJT.

The danger, however, is that you take a losing finesse in clubs and then the ♦A is sitting over your K. This would be four losers. Note that this is not at all unlikely given the bidding.

It would be nice if, instead of taking the normal finesse in clubs, that we could take a ruffing finesse against RHO. This keeps RHO off lead and thus our diamond king will not be vulnerable. This can be done by leading the ♥J, pitching our potential club loser from hand and putting LHO on lead.

It is safe to draw trumps first, finishing in dummy. Take care not waste both your low trumps from hand as you will need the trump suit as an entry for the clubs.

Also, if LHO, having taken the offered heart trick, returns another heart, don't be tempted to ruff in the short hand as would usually be the case. Ruff the heart in hand so as to preserve the trump entry.

Think I've thought of everything and not made any oversights.

Nick

[Trumpace]

Yup, that looks right to me. I cannot find any flaws, well done!

Followup question: Now suppose this was matchpoints. Would you play any differently?

[NickRW]

You beat me to asking the same question.

I think probably I do play the same at matchpoints for these reasons:

1. In a mediocre field there are normally one or two pairs that have missed game for some reason. You always beat those pairs with the safe line.

2. In a better quality field the chances of getting pairs missing game goes down, but the chances of enemy action in 5♥ goes up. It is impossibe to say at the time you have to play to trick one what the outcome of such a contract would be, but it seems quite possible to me that 5♥ may be 2 or less off. If that is the case you beat the NS pairs that find themselves in that position with the same line. And if 5♥ should be 3 off there is nothing you can do to improve your lot anyway. (This is assuming they're doubled of course).

3. I'm not very hot on analysing percentages, but it seems to me that at least some plausible lines of play in 4♠ are as likely to fail as they are to produce an overtrick in which case you don't need to worry about those declarers in choosing your line of attack - some days you'll be lucky taking the safe line, in others you won't, but there is nothing you can do to change your overall chances.

Nick

[Trumpace]

Ok, in Matchpoints suppose one decides to hook the club.

How should one play if

A) The club hook wins.

OR alternately

B) The club hook loses and a largish diamond comes back i.e how should the diamond suit be played?


Again, these followup questions are for B/I and Adv/Adv+ please hide your answers.

[NickRW]

Jlall, on Jun 12 2008, 12:07 AM, said:

About MP:...

I think you're right. I tried crunching some numbers in a spread sheet and it gets complicated depending on how many of who are in what etc., but it seems that the upshot is that if, on those layouts where you could be off, RHO goes wrong a third of the time then you're showing a profit over the safety play. And RHO probably will go wrong at least that often I guess.