[H_KARLUK]

dburn, on Mar 15 2009, 02:35 AM, said:

ArtK78, on Mar 14 2009, 03:53 PM, said:

I am hoping that I am not beating a dead horse, but suppose you have a 4-3 fit in a suit and you have played two rounds of the suit, with both opponents following.  The relative chances of 4-2 breaks and 3-3 breaks have not changed (assuming that you have no information from the play of the other suits that have an impact on the likelihood of 4-2 and 3-3 breaks in this suit).  So, the relative chances of the suit breaking 4-2 or 3-3 is still 4-3 in favor of the 4-2 break.  But there are two different 4-2 breaks - one in which LHO has 4 and the other in which RHO has 4.  So, when you play the third round in the suit and LHO follows, you have eliminated the chance that RHO has 4.  Now the odds are roughly 3-2 in favor of a 3-3 break.

Is there an award for the most staggering lot of nonsense ever advanced on the BBO forums? Because if there is, the above "reasoning" would win not only this year's prize, but every prize for which it was entered from here to perpetuity.

Dburn: I nominate your thread. My reason : You violated Isaac Newton's rule .“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.” (English Mathematician and Physicist, "father of the modern science", 1642-1727)

But i see your default mood : “It's only arrogance if you're wrong” .

Now i expect your honest apologize to ArtK78. Well, if you think that you are a King or extracurricular one I doubt your abilities.

Are you really sure that you are here to discuss an idea politely or to name in an ugly way whenever you upset ? As you see it's not so hard.

[ArtK78]

hanp, on Mar 15 2009, 11:00 AM, said:

First of all, well done finding a somewhat reasonable application.

Second, If all minor suit cards are out yet you know nothing of their distribution then you haven't been paying much attention

Thirdly, If LHO holds 4 spades and the QJ of hearts then winning the spade jack and taking the heart hook still works.

Continuing on your idea one could come up with a hand where the bidding is 2NT-3NT and dummy has ♦Qxxx and ♥Kx, with declarer holding ♥QJx and ♦AKJ. Dummy has no further entries. Declarer receives an unrevealing attitude lead in some side suit and to make her contrract she absolutely needs 4 diamond tricks. She plays AKJ of diamonds and all follow, should she overtake or hope the ace of hearts is onside...

Thank you. I spent some time trying to come up with a position where the decision of whether to play for the 3-3 break or the 4-2 break might occur. Taking it one step further to figure out how that position would arise in real life is a bigger challenge. Clearly, there can be no outside entry to the hand with the Q432 (or the opponents knock out that entry by leading the suit on opening lead).

As for not being able to find out anything about the location of the opponents' high cards in the heart suit of the distribution in the spade suit (you substituted diamonds for spades in your discussion), there are hands where you do not find out any relevant information, or the information that you do find out does not point you in one direction or the other. Good opponents can make it difficult to find out any helpful information about the location of the unknown cards.

As for your example, it would work better if you reduced your heart holding to Qxx opposite Kx and changed the requirement to declarer needs 5 of the last 6 tricks.

[hackenbush]

Some of you may already have ready this from Pavlicek's site.

How Percentages Change

[EricK]

Can anybody answer this question:

You have a 3-3-3-4 distribution dummy is 3-3-4-3. You get a spade lead. You cash ♠AK, ♥AK ♦AK all following.

At this point, what are the probabilities for each club break?

Ignore the fact that the information so obtained might be useless and that we have almost certainly already misplayed the hand!

[dburn]

ArtK78, on Mar 14 2009, 10:59 PM, said:

hanp, on Mar 14 2009, 09:23 PM, said:

I also think Art is correct and I can't think of a single bridge context in which anybody would care.

I thought that I said that in my post. It is just a curiosity - it has no practical application.

And I don't appreciate the insults. It is beneath the usual dignity of the poster.

I'm very sorry, Art. I had misread your post, thinking that it was a reference to the original problem (AK10x facing Qxx), not to the more recently discussed situation (AKJx facing Qxx).

In that situation, of course, the chances are as you say: when West follows to the third round of the suit, either he began with three cards (an initial 36% chance) or with four cards (an initial 24% chance). As to a practical application of the principle, one might consider:

Scoring: IMP

---

South, declarer in 3NT, wins the opening lead of ♠K (for fear of a heart shift). East indicates an even number, and declarer assumes correctly that spades are 4-4.

On four rounds of clubs, West follows twice and discards a spade and a heart; East follows three times and discards a spade. Both follow to ♦AK, and West follows to ♦J. West, who has fewer black cards than East, is a favourite to have ♥A, so should one retain the lead in South and play a heart towards the king, or should one overtake ♦J?

(Note: one should probably do neither of the above; instead, one might play three rounds of diamonds, overtaking in dummy, before playing the fourth round of clubs. If diamonds do not break, there is still the option on a heart to the king. But, especially in the beginners' lounge, the clubs might be played off early...)

[ArtK78]

Thank you, David, for your most recent post.

The hand that you post as a possible application of this principle contains the suit combinations noted in one of my earlier posts. Putting together a hand where this is the only way to deal with the problem is a bigger challenge. As you state in the hand that you posted, you could test the diamond suit (winning the third round in dummy by overtaking) to see if it broke 3-3 before cashing all of the clubs.

If you weaken the spade position to Axx opposite xx, then there is more of a problem. If you assume that the opponents' spades are breaking 4-4, the option of cashing the diamonds by leading the A, K and J and overtaking with the Q in dummy could establish a diamond as the 5th defensive trick when the ♥A is onside. So, in that case, it would make sense to cash all of the clubs first hoping for a useful discard.