[bftboy]

Scoring: IMP

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A couple of European experts bid as follows: 1♦, 4NT, 5♦, 6NT.

oh, well. So how do you play on the lead of the Q♣?

[Fluffy]

♠ finese at trick 2. Cash ♠A before playing hearts trusting RHO's 10, I wanna know what to discard from dummy on the club

[Jlall]

This hand is very complicated. Let's start by examining some various diamond to the jack lines.

1) Diamond to the jack. Ace of diamonds. Knock out heart and pitch spade on club.

2) Diamond to the jack. Ace of diamonds. Knock out heart and pitch diamond on club.

1 wins on 3-3 diamonds when spades were not coming in for 3 but not 4 tricks.

2 wins on 4-2 diamonds when spades are coming in for four tricks.

Line 1 is better.

Now think of line 3...

3) Diamond to the jack. Ace of diamonds. Diamond! Spade to jack, knock out heart. If diamonds were Qxxx but LHO won the heart we pitch a diamond on the next club. If diamonds were 3-3 we know to pitch a spade.

This is clearly better as it gives you a chance when diamonds are 4-2 if LHO has the HA and you can get four spade tricks. Since you're pitching a spade later anyways this line is clearly right.

Now let's look at the spade lines.

Spade to jack, ace of spades. If righty and lefty are BOTH incapable of falsecarding (lefty with Txx playing the T on the second round), then we are in good shape. If RHO has followed with the queen or the ten we "know" we can pick up the suit. So knock out the heart and pitch a diamond from dummy. If RHO has followed with small and LHO has played the ten, we can definitely pitch a spade from dummy. In all of these situations we can delay our diamond guess until the end.

If both have followed small we have a guess. But again playing for 3-3 spades and 3 diamond tricks is better than 4-2 spades and 4 diamond tricks, so pitch a diamond from dummy if this has happened. But again even better than this is to play a spade to the king. If that works we can later guess the DQ for the contract, if not we can play a diamond to the jack and knock out the HA and hope LHO wins the ace and we can take 4 diamond tricks.

What if they are capable of falsecarding always?

Then we see a transposition in lines.

Line 3) Diamond to jack, ace of diamonds, diamond to the king, spade to the jack hearts or.

Line 4) Spade to jack, ace of spades, spade to king, diamond to jack hearts.

Line 4 is clearly inferior since you are more likely to pick up diamonds immediately (Qx gives you 4 tricks as opposed to spades). However, you gain some edge in that you get to get a count on the hand before you guess diamonds when spades do come in for 4 tricks. Not very much since you will have to use diamonds to cross to dummy to cash the 4th heart, before you have much of a count.

So which is better assuming perfect falsecarding? I would say line 3.

But...they won't falsecard perfectly. An average opponent I would assume would not falsecard with Txx on the second round on my left, and RHO would not play the queen or the ten with QTxx. So If LHO played the ten on the second round I would switch gears and play RHO for Qxxx of spades and just knock out hearts, pitch a spade, and go for 4 diamond tricks. If they played the ten I would not play for QTxx, I would play for a careless QTx and play a spade to the king with confidence.

So against excellent defenders I would play diamond to the jack, ace of diamonds, diamond to the king.

Against weaker opps spade to the jack, ace of spades. If LHO dropped the ten, knock out hearts. If RHO played the ten play hearts (preserving spade entry), pitch diamond from dummy, and eventually try to guess diamonds with a good count. If RHO dropped the queen and they weren't good, knock out heart planning on hooking spade later and guessing diamond with a good count. Even if they are just "ok" opponents, I would play spade to the king and if that didn't work play diamond to the J and knock out the HA and hope to survive. If everyone played small spades I'd play a spade to the king and if that didn't live D to jack and hope to survive.

[Jlall]

lol I didn't know I wrote that much. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up!

[dellache]

Jlall, on Oct 26 2009, 10:19 PM, said:

So against excellent defenders I would play diamond to the jack, ace of diamonds, diamond to the king.

Hi Justin, thanx for your interesting post (as often).

I definitely think you have a slightly better line if you assume they play spades randomly (or if you prefer, change the ♠9 into ♠2 for the sake of the demonstration : no more falscarding guess).

We suppose East has got the ♠Q.

Then as you demonstrated, the basis of the winning line decomposes into :
base-a-(main) play diamonds, check if you can score 4 of them ;
base-b-(secondary) if not (you have made 3 diamonds but cannot score the 4th one), hook spades, hope they are 3-3 and that the holder of the 4th diamond cannot cash it (s/he doesn't have ♥A).

Having said that, instead of playing ♦ to Jack, you can also play diamond to Ace (gaining stiff Q, tiny improvement) and play small to the 10. You still make if West has the short Diamond Queen or diamonds are 3-3 (if the Queen appears, it's obvious, otherwise cashing then the K does no harm).

Now the fact that you got a ♣Q lead should come into account. One of the advantages of the diamond suit is that you can score the slam if the Q is short (subcases of base-a). If you place West with QJT of clubs, West is usually the shortest side in diamonds (we don't care about 3-3 for the time being). Also, when West has the long DQ, East is now a favourite to hold both ♠Q and ♥Ace (actually this is not so simple but the remaining cases belong to base-b, and are of second order). Well, the most important fact is that the "big" subcase of one oppo having the short ♦Qx should convince you to hook against West.

It's not quite possible to compute this at the table.

Elementary arithmetics will show you that :
- if you assume West has ♣QJT :
- hooking against West wins 18.1% of the time (actually 413930/2376192 cases)
- while hooking against East wins only 17.3% of the time (only 410294)
- if you assume West has just ♣QJ without Ten, hooking against West is still 17.4% versus 17.2%.

Not a big deal but what .
Cheers,

[Jlall]

Yes you are right, lefty is more likely to have the short DQ based on the lead and you pick up another stiff Q. I was too focused on spades vs diamonds and whether to cash the third round of the suit or not that I forgot about something so simple

[bftboy]

LHO had 10x xxx Qx QJ10xxx and RHO had Qxxx Axx 98xx xx so you can see how the lines would work.

The actual declarer played on hearts immediately, eventually got stuck in dummy with the spade K after the club return, and pretty much had to take the diamond finesse the wrong way. Seems better to me to start with the spade hook, then cash the A. Assuming honest cards in spades (!), you can then play hearts, and begin to count the hand so you can make a better guess in diamonds, and manage them correctly once you decide who has the Q.

[dellache]

bftboy, on Oct 27 2009, 08:41 PM, said:

LHO had 10x xxx Qx QJ10xxx and RHO had Qxxx Axx 98xx xx so you can see how the lines would work. 

The actual declarer played on hearts immediately, eventually got stuck in dummy with the spade K after the club return, and pretty much had to take the diamond finesse the wrong way.  Seems better to me to start with the spade hook, then cash the A.  Assuming honest cards in spades (!), you can then play hearts, and begin to count the hand so you can make a better guess in diamonds, and manage them correctly once you decide who has the Q.

Yes ! I would have made it lol
The real hand looks almost to good for the "short Qx in west hand theory"...(very long ♣QJT...).