[inquiry]

Scoring: IMP


1♣ - ( 2♠ ) - Dbl - (pass)
3♠ - (pass) - 4 ♦ - (pass)
4♥ - (pass) - 5♣ - (pass)
6♣ - All pass


T1. H7-H5-H8-HT
T2. C4-C7-CK-C2
T3. C8-C3-CA-♠3

Plan your play. (They all can not be killer tough, so ok, I admit that this will be by far the easiest hand I will post, although you can make it difficult if you want.... )

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[quiddity]

When I first looked at the hand it seemed pretty straightforward: win the HT, cash a top club and a top spade, then a club to dummy, a spade to the king, and a third spade ruffed in dummy. After the given play to the first three tricks I don't see anything better than cashing the top spades and hoping East doesn't have a stiff.

[hrothgar]

Why did I win the first heart trick with the Ace rather than the 10?

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Feb 1 2010, 06:42 PM, said:

Why did I win the first heart trick with the Ace rather than the 10?

typo, fixed

[quiddity]

ok, after the fix I can cash a top spade, lead a heart to the king and then a spade to the king in case west started with 7 spades. This loses only if East had a singleton heart - almost impossible given the bidding and the lead. If that's the solution you're looking for, I'll rate the problem 2.0 / 2.5.

[inquiry]

quiddity, on Feb 1 2010, 07:08 PM, said:

ok, after the fix I can cash a top spade, lead a heart to the king and then a spade to the king in case west started with 7 spades.  This loses only if East had a singleton heart - almost impossible given the bidding and the lead.  If that's the solution you're looking for, I'll rate the problem 2.0 / 2.5.

This is it.

1) Don't lead a third round of clubs
2) Don't cash two top spades trying to ruff a spade in dummy, as east may be able to ruff one....

So, lead a heart to dummy. Actually on this heart, EAST shows out. You can cash second heart, ruff a diamond, ruff the last heart, or you can lead a spade towards hand. If east ruffs, duck, if not, win and ruff a spade.

Simple hand. I actually would rate this as 1.5 maybe 2.0, but I don't vote in these as I want to see what others vote.

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[wank]

i think you're vastly underestimating how bad most bridge players are.

[inquiry]

wank, on Feb 2 2010, 03:11 AM, said:

i think you're vastly underestimating how bad most bridge players are.

I am not. This quiz is for what ever YOU think a beginner/intermdiate/advanced/expert are. Maybe in your view 99.99999% of all players are beginners, that should not change your vote. You should vote for what you think a person would do if they meet whatever your STANDARD might be for the different levels.

Yes, I understand a beginner would "get the trumps off the street first", and surely a novice would (note, I didn't include novice in the list).

There are many of these hands ( and more that I will post if people find them interesting, although on them I can lose the rating thing) that are interesting and so challenging that I think few will get them right, but I still think high advanced or better would. Some will require expert for sure. Note: in problem form, experts should get them all right unless they are cooked.

[quiddity]

inquiry, on Feb 2 2010, 10:38 AM, said:

There are many of these hands ( and more that I will post if people find them interesting, although on them I can lose the rating thing)

By all means, please post more of them.
About the rating for this hand - I think safety play is one of the benchmarks of "intermediate" rank and this one is pretty easy to spot, so 2.0 looks right.

[inquiry]

Ok, I will post more as we finish up these first 15. At this time, there has been 15 votes in this poll, ranging from a low of 1.0 to a high of 3.5. This averages out to be 2.0, but I think realistically, we can discard the votes for 3.0 or 3.5 unless someone can show us a superior and difficult to find line of play. This brings us to 13 votes with an average of 1.8. I can accept this hand is somewhere below 2.0 in difficulty.

[Mbodell]

inquiry, on Feb 2 2010, 07:43 PM, said:

Ok, I will post more as we finish up these first 15. At this time, there has been 15 votes in this poll, ranging from a low of 1.0 to a high of 3.5. This averages out to be 2.0, but I think realistically, we can discard the votes for 3.0 or 3.5 unless someone can show us a superior and difficult to find line of play. This brings us to 13 votes with an average of 1.8. I can accept this hand is somewhere below 2.0 in difficulty.

I'm not sure you should be throwing out scores on these, especially since I think you are underestimating the number of people who would go wrong at the table. If you found these in a typical game with good defenders (so you'd go down if you messed up the line) I'd think even the "easy" hands would be messed up lots in most games. Bridge is a hard game of mistakes, after all.

[inquiry]

Mbodell, on Feb 3 2010, 05:59 AM, said:

inquiry, on Feb 2 2010, 07:43 PM, said:

Ok, I will post more as we finish up these first 15. At this time, there has been 15 votes in this poll, ranging from a low of 1.0 to a high of 3.5. This averages out to be 2.0, but I think realistically, we can discard the votes for 3.0 or 3.5 unless someone can show us a superior and difficult to find line of play. This brings us to 13 votes with an average of 1.8. I can accept this hand is somewhere below 2.0 in difficulty.

I'm not sure you should be throwing out scores on these, especially since I think you are underestimating the number of people who would go wrong at the table. If you found these in a typical game with good defenders (so you'd go down if you messed up the line) I'd think even the "easy" hands would be messed up lots in most games. Bridge is a hard game of mistakes, after all.

Is a difference between 2.0 and 1.8 that much?

[Mbodell]

inquiry, on Feb 3 2010, 06:57 AM, said:

Is a difference between 2.0 and 1.8 that much?

No, but if I look at it now I see through the first 20 votes the average is 2.15. But moreover I don't think it is right to poll on difficulty and then throw out the tail of the distribution you agree the least with. At least, I don't think that is right if you truly want to know how the community views the problems.

[jdonn]

At least if you're going to throw out the 2 highest scores you should throw out the 2 lowest scores.