[shevek]

Scoring: IMP

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You reach 6♣/S after an uncontested relay auction.
West leads a helpful ♦J.

For bonus points, play 6♠/S on the same lead.

[andy_h]

How about a cross ruff? Cover and ruff, three top hearts (King first to try and get count) to pitch a spade, ♠A, ruff a spade, top diamond pitching a spade, diamond ruff and now I'll have to guess which major to lead.

[dellache]

The best line may depend on :
- the opponents skill : are they top class or not ?
- the sequence : who did relay ? Is south hand well known or not ?
Can you be more precise ?

[dellache]

I see basically two lines:

LINE A (straightforward) : Play K♦, ruff the Ace, Cash K♣, play J♣ and finesse. If it loses you are down. Otherwise, Cash ♠A (catering for a stiff K/Q) and proceed to establish spades. There are variants depending on the ♣Q appearing on 1st or 2nd round, and what happens on the spade ace and continuation. All in all, the chances of making with line A are around 1/3 of the time.

LINE B (depends on many factors) : play as Andy suggested. The size of the trump spots allow for an automatic endplay if you guess which Major to play at trick 8 (if West cannot follow suit at trick 8, you make 100%). If you guess wrong (or if there's no right guess, West being 34xx) you still make if West has the ♣Q9(x).

The problem with line B is that success depends strongly on your ability to guess the Major suits, and that in turn depends on the bidding sequence and opponent strength :

1. How often will you get the count on the ♥K ?
2. Is the oppo with Hxx in spades able to play his honor on the second round (producing an useless clash). If not, you can use restricted choice theory to guess the spades 2/3 of the time ;
3. Will East think about playing the 10♥ on the 3rd round when he has 107xx ? If not, you'll get restricted choice theory about the lead when West plays ♥J9x : if he had the 10, you would infer that he may have led ♥J from JT9x. Same story if east has got the J7xx.
4. BTW, Hearts will be 4-3 more than 62% of the time, also because West didnot lead one.

If you compute percentages, you will see that if E/W play their major cards randomly, LINE B will succeed much less often than line A. But in real play, if they play "honestly"(!), line B becomes a little tad better than line A.

Choosing between the 2 lines you need to be at the table (against some defenders, East maybe nervous if he has Q♣ and ♦A). If I'm in the zone and the opponents not, I would choose line B. Also, if you make by choosing line B, East having the ♣Q, you might get a psychological advantage.

I hope I didnot overlook something, otherwise all the stuff above will look ridiculous .

Regarding 6♠, I didnot really think about it. I would try to maximize my chances in the trump suit, playing twice toward AJ10. For that I'll need 2 entries to dummy, and I'll take a 1st round finesse against W in clubs. Chances of success depend again on oppos : is West strong enough to :
1. [Difficult] duck the 1st spade w/ Hx when he has Qxx in ♣, I'll probably fail. Club to 10, spade to Jack, making the trick twice. Club to Ace spade to 10 losing to K/Q and back comes the Club ruff.
2. [also difficult] insert the ♣Q when I play toward the A10, I'm not able to reach dummy twice.

Interesting hand .

[shevek]

Scoring: IMP

6♣/s on ♦J lead

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Andy Hung's cross-ruff is likely to work. When East's ♠K falls, declarer is unlikely to go wrong. This seems slightly better than finding West with ♣Q.

(You aiming to play in Canberra Andy?)

6♠/W is awkward, even on ♦J lead. If you ruff a heart to take one spade finesse, you obviously fail to ♠Hxx in East or having East ruff the fourth heart. That looks wrong, even though it works.

However, you can't get two entries to dummy for finesses even if West has ♣Qxx because West can block the suit.

[dellache]

shevek, on Oct 23 2009, 11:50 AM, said:

Dealer: South Vul: Both Scoring: IMP

♠ 43 ♥ 86 ♦ KQ54 ♣ AT852 ♠ Q92 ♥ T53 ♦ JT96 ♣ 943 ♠ K8 ♥ J972 ♦ A8732 ♣ Q7 ♠ AJT765 ♥ AKQ4 ♦   ♣ KJ6

6♣/s on ♦J lead

Andy Hung's cross-ruff is likely to work. When East's ♠K falls, declarer is unlikely to go wrong. This seems slightly better than finding West with ♣Q.

... unless, as I said above, West plays the ♠Queen on the second round (thoughtful), and East the ♥J on the third round (easy). Good defenders should do that because after the start, the situation is clear even if it was south relaying. BTW, we still don't know who was the relayer

[gnasher]

shevek, on Oct 23 2009, 12:50 PM, said:

Andy Hung's cross-ruff is likely to work. When East's ♠K falls, declarer is unlikely to go wrong. This seems slightly better than finding West with ♠Q.

If declarer plays for the player who plays an honour on the second round to have Hx, he will be right 2/3 of the time, because Hxx-Hx is twice as likely as xx-HHx.

However, almost a quarter of that time LHO will be 3-4 in the majors, and the heart will be overruffed too. That's more likely than that LHO is 2-3 in the majors, where you can survive getting the spade layout wrong.

Add the possibility that the second or third round of hearts gets ruffed (probably fatal if it's East that ruffs, and not great if it's West), or that East overruffs the second round of spades, and Dellache's estimates sound believable.

[andy_h]

Heh to be honest I'm not particularly good at calculating percentages and rarely able to do so at the table. I guess the reason why I didn't like hooking West for the queen was because it's committing to it right away whereas crossruffing I might be able to pick up some tells (barring wild breaks). But yeah, hooking does seem pretty reasonable.

(Yeah Nicoleta, I'll certainly be in Canberra!)