[Walddk]

Scoring: MP

S: 4H
Lead: CK

---

This was a most interesting hand from last night's Open Pairs in the Icelandair Open in Reykjavík.

NS: Joe Grue-Curtis Cheek
EW: Þorlákur Jónsson-Jón Baldursson

As South you have reached the normal 4♥ after you have shown 5-5 in the majors. West leads ♣K and continues the suit to East's ace. Now a third club comes back, and you ruff with the 8, overruffed with the 10.

West exits in diamonds, you win the ace in dummy and play a heart. East follows with the queen, you win, West following with the 5, and lead a heart toward dummy's K7. West contributes the 6.

Over to you.

Roland

[skjaeran]

At this moment there are 7 spaces available for the ♥J in both hands. Thus, seeing the trump suit in isolation, it's a tossup between finessing or playing the king.

However, if you finesse, you need spades 3-3 to make the contract. If you play the king, dropping the jack, you've made your contract.

So I'm playing for the drop.

[JLOL]

Also I don't think west would lead from Kx with JTxx of trumps.

Also it isn't really restricted choice against anyone because even though LHO could ruff with the J or T with JT, RHO could play the Q or the J with QJ, so the restricted choice applies for both of them.

[MickyB]

JLOL, on Jan 30 2009, 08:46 AM, said:

Also it isn't really restricted choice against anyone because even though LHO could ruff with the J or T with JT, RHO could play the Q or the J with QJ, so the restricted choice applies for both of them.

Say East had followed the the jack instead of the queen - what now?

[JLOL]

MickyB, on Jan 30 2009, 03:54 AM, said:

JLOL, on Jan 30 2009, 08:46 AM, said:

Also it isn't really restricted choice against anyone because even though LHO could ruff with the J or T with JT, RHO could play the Q or the J with QJ, so the restricted choice applies for both of them.

Say East had followed the the jack instead of the queen - what now?

Too much of a mindfck there and it eventually goes back to restricted choice. I mean you can say that they can ruff with the ten and jack specifically to make us think there's no restricted choice on west to try and get us to finesse west out of it, but they can use that against you.

edit: one thing i said was retarded.

Anyways regardless of restricted choice I think it's obv to just go up with the king.

[Walddk]

I think Harald made a valid point (the same Kit Woolsey made when the hand was played). Without revealing what actually worked, it's not just a heart problem in isolation. You must also consider the spade suit.

Roland

[Trinidad]

Just my two cents. I don not claim to be any good at declarer play. In principle, it seems that the two restricted choice situations cancel each other. West may have chosen to overruff with JT and East may have chosen to play the Q from QJ.

But let's look at the two different possibilities. They are:

1. T65-QJ
2. JT65-Q

(Grey cards played)

Now, I would apply the principle of restricted choice in a different way. With holding 1 (T65), West would always overruff. With holding 2 (JT65), West would refuse to overruff a significant part of the time. Therefore, West is less likely to have JT65 and I will play him for T65 and East for the QJ doubleton.

Rik

[MickyB]

Love this hand, Roland. If you look at the heart suit in isolation, I think the two cases of restricted choice lead to no choice at all - there is a very definite optimal strategy for the defence.

Edit: When I was thinking about it initially, I was assuming West would always overruff with the ten from QTxx. Or, indeed, always overruff with the queen from QTxx. If that is a 50/50, then yes, it's just all lots of restricted choice

[Mbodell]

Trinidad, on Jan 30 2009, 01:10 AM, said:

Just my two cents. I don not claim to be any good at declarer play. In principle, it seems that the two restricted choice situations cancel each other. West may have chosen to overruff with JT and East may have chosen to play the Q from QJ.

Maybe at this level everyone knows everything that was coming but really when West ruffed if he has JT he doesn't know that the QJT are the missing cards so he can play J or T randomly. But when East plays the Q if he has QJ then he knows playing the Q will make the declarer have this 2 way restricted choice. And if he plays the J then there will just be restricted choice against East (J from QJ or stiff J) not West. So on the first level shouldn't East with QJ tight nearly always play the J because partner has been exposed with the T in this situation and QJ tight knows the count of trump suit? I guess I'm asking once partner's T is already exposed shouldn't East play the J if he wants declarer to finesse and the Q if he wants declarer to have a harder choice and only sometimes finesse.

[Benoit35]

Interesting Mbodell. At this point it becomes more of a mind game than anything else. So I'd rather look at it way back from the opening lead (before the defense has shown us 4 trump cards): West's strategy was to get a club ruff. Holding 4 heart cards behind the declarer, this would be "ruffing with his money", as the French say.

And there's the spades. Go for the drop.

[Fluffy]

This hand is growing me a headache. Everything Mbodell says looks logic to me, but I just fail to concentrate enough to see if clearly.

Harald's point about spades suit, and JLOL's about leading form Kx with J10xx seem to be the important ones.

[jwmonty]

If West really had J10xx of hearts, wouldn't he at least consider refusing to overruff? He still has a natural heart trick.

[Trinidad]

jwmonty, on Jan 30 2009, 09:19 AM, said:

If West really had J10xx of hearts, wouldn't he at least consider refusing to overruff?  He still has a natural heart trick.

That was what I was trying to say when I wrote:

Quote

Now, I would apply the principle of restricted choice in a different way. With holding 1 (T65), West would always overruff. With holding 2 (JT65), West would refuse to overruff a significant part of the time. Therefore, West is less likely to have JT65 and I will play him for T65 and East for the QJ doubleton.

BTW, I am aware that this is technically not restricted choice (since ruffing and refusing to ruff are not equivalent plays whereas playing the Q or J from QJ are). Nevertheless, if a defender wouldn't know what to do (ruff or refuse to ruff), that makes the plays "psychologically equivalent". In this case, I would think that most players at this level wouldn't overruff holding JTxx when they are sitting in front of Kxx in dummy. That would tend to make playing for the drop a lot better than finessing.

Rik

[Edmunte1]

Good problem Roland. Some of my points of view:
- I don't think that leading ♣K from Kx holding J10xx in trumps as unusual after South showed 5-5 in majors (probably 1♠-1nt-2♥-2♠-3♥-4♥ is the usual sequence). The defense should try to get some tricks in the minor suits and leading the better and shorter one seems a pretty good choice for me. Let's remeber that EW are a world-class pair;

-I don't also think that playing for the finesse requires spades 3-3 as long as a ♣-♠ squeeze is available if the finesse works (ruff ♦, enter to dummy on ♥K, cash ♦K and East is squeezed if his shape is 4-1-4-4, 5-1-3-4;

- I agree with Harald that calculating the probability using empty spots teory doesn't bring us any useful clue;

-I quite agree with the double restricted choice ideea. At this moment it's a restricted choice for East (Q from QJ or bold Q). Also it could have been a restricted choice on West overuff (10J or bold 10), but it's more probable with J10xx East to try to falsecard with J

-Last but not least, let's remember it's a MP tourney, with good and no so good players, so not everyone would receive ♣K lead. If trumps are 3-2 some lucky players will chalk an easy 450 but 4-1 trump will keep them to 420. This could be a reason for playing for the finesse, though with trumps 3-2 we will receive a bottom . Considering that ♣K will be lead in 50% of cases, then:

A. I trumps are 3-2 we will receive a 37.5% playing for a drop and 0% playing for finesse (37.5% gain)
B. If trump are 4-1 we will receive 62.5% for playing for finesse and a 7.5% playing for drop (55% gain)

[benlessard]

Play for the drop.

Its quite likely the board is already lost by the lead, in that case its pretty much important to get the table feel, state of tourney and completed auction to know if/why west made a risky lead. Its iumportant because we may need to play off-field just to manage to save some MP.

If we bid a slow 4H, west might feel the need to make an agressive lead to put us down. While if 4H was bid with confidence the K of clubs is a risky lead and imo is a probably a sign that the S are breaking.

However i have a real hard times finding a situation where i would lead a Kx holding JTxx in trumps. I dont expect many west to find that lead so in that case we probably lost the board on the lead anyway.

Add to that the spades and playing for the drop seems clear.

[sathyab]

benlessard, on Jan 31 2009, 10:17 AM, said:

Play for the drop.

Its quite likely the board is already lost by the lead, in that case its pretty much important to get the table feel, state of tourney and completed auction to know if/why west made a risky lead. Its iumportant because we may need to play off-field just to manage to save some MP.

If we bid a slow 4H, west might feel the need to make an agressive lead to put us down. While if 4H was bid with confidence the K of clubs is a risky lead and imo is a probably a sign that the S are breaking.

However i have a real hard times finding a situation where i would lead a Kx holding JTxx in trumps. I dont expect many west to find that lead so in that case we probably lost the board on the lead anyway.

Add to that the spades and playing for the drop seems clear.

An excellent point that Kit made (and Edmunte1 above) was that West wasn't necessarily leading a club to get a ruff. He was leading a club in order to establish and/or cash some club tricks, just as he would lead a low club from Kxx. So you can't draw any inference from his lead except that he's probably a good player who made an aggressive lead that seems to have worked well for his side. In your private score card you'd mark this board as "F", which can stand for "Fixed" among other alternatives.

Oh BTW, spades were NOT breaking.

[MFA]

Very difficult. Here is what I think.

Level 1.
Basically this is a 2-way restricted choice situation and these cancel out eachother.
The relevant holdings are

JTxx - Q
Txx - QJ

If we examine 10 times of each holding, we'll expect to see the sequence T-Q 2*5 times. So it's fifty-fifty in isolation to play for the drop or to finesse.

Level 2.
As pointed out, E should play the J from QJ, because when W plays T and E plays J, declarer knows there were no restricted choice in W's play. When it goes T-J it is therefore right to finesse, and thus E can only gain from playing the J from QJ tight.

This is also in accordance with the principle of playing "the exposed card". East hasn't exactly shown the J, but he has implied it because of the restricted choice principle!

Let's say that E realizes this 40% of the time. He will then play J from QJ 70% and Q from QJ 30%.
As before:

10 holdings of JTxx - Q will now produce 5 T-Q and 5 J-Q
10 holdings of Txx - QJ will now produce 3 T-Q and 7 T-J

When we see T-Q it's therefore (at this level) 5:3 odds on to finesse.
Is that enough to finesse considering the complete play problem? Perhaps. As pointed out we have a squeeze if east has the spade guard as well as the clubs.

Level 3.
Since east should play the J from QJ, it is bad news for W holding JTxx to see the spots go T-Q. He should therefore overruff with the J from JTxx to preserve the double restricted choice position in case partner has the stiff Q!

Let's say that W realizes this just 20% of the time, because it's hard to see. He will then ruff with the T from JTxx 40% and with the J 60%.
As before:

10 holdings of JTxx - Q will now produce 4 T-Q and 6 J-Q (level 3 considerations)
10 holdings of Txx - QJ will now produce 3 T-Q and 7 T-J (level 2 considerations)

At this level, when we see T-Q it is 4:3 odds on to finesse. Not enough considering the complete deal.

Evaluation.
The 40% and the 20% are completely arbitrary and most likely way to high.
Actually I think that W is very likely to tend to overruff with the T from JTxx and not with the J. He will often not visualize our trump problem this early. This point works in the opposite direction of the principle in 'Level 3', and makes a finesse much more attracting.

All in all I find the complete play problem very difficult to judge. Without the spade problem, I would surely finesse now against these opponents, but with the spade problem also, it's close.
But let me go against the majority view and say, I would finesse the hearts now anyway.

[JLOL]

Now for the real story...

Joe got home last night and I asked him if he was declarer on this hand. He said no Curtis was, and his first reaction as dummy was "wtf" but then Curtis explained that he thought very few people would find the CK lead. Given that few people would find the CK lead, if hearts were 32 he was screwed no matter what he did (it is very easy to make 5 on a diamond lead, and the best he can do now is make 4). Thus he made an anti percentage play and played for 41 hearts in which case the field would only make 4 on a diamond lead anyways so he could get back to average.

Joe and I both now think Curtis made the right play (as he usually seems to do!).

edit: Just saw Edmunte also said this, wd Edmunte.