[el mister]

You're in 2♠ after the auction 2♥ (weak) on your right, 2♠ from you, all pass.
The trump suit looks like this:

A10x


KQxxx

LHO wins 2 rounds of diamonds, all following, then leads another one. Dummy is out of diamonds as is RHO. Is there a best line of play here to avoid a trump loser? ie how do you best deal with the ruffing situation then the drawing of trumps?

[Not sure if this is interesting or not - I bolloxed it up at the table last night and it's been bugging me.]

[Free]

Sorry but you can't isolate 1 suit from an entire hand and ask how to play it just because you're out of ♦s. There may be loser on loser plays available, more clues because of your ♥ holding,... Moreover you don't even mention the scoring format and more important the vulnerability!

[cherdanno]

It sounds like you should ruff with the 10, picking up Jxx or Jx with LHO.

[gwnn]

yes it would take some IMMENSE CLUE from the opps not to ruff with the ten such as RHO sitting next to me in an internet cafe and me peeking and seeing he has the stiff Jack.

[vuroth]

Well if you're sure RHO is out of diamonds, you'd better ruff high, right?

If your ruff with the ace, you'd better hope that spades are 3-2, and the doubleton contains the jack. That's a lot to ask for.

If you ruff with the ten, you'd better hope that spades are 3-2, and that LHO has the jack, whether he has 3 or 2 spades.

If you ruff low, or don't ruff at all, you'd better hope spades are 5-0 with LHO. Um, nope, still lose a trump trick.

Your odds of avoiding a trump loser aren't good, but the ten seems right.

[655321]

vuroth, on May 26 2010, 10:23 AM, said:

If your ruff with the ace, you'd better hope that spades are 3-2, and the doubleton contains the jack.  That's a lot to ask for.

Ruffing with the Ace guarantees at least one trump loser on any distribution, including when someone has Jx.

[vuroth]

oops, you're right. the ten is now doubleton.

i stand corrected

[el mister]

655321, on May 26 2010, 10:33 AM, said:

Ruffing with the Ace guarantees at least one trump loser on any distribution, including when someone has Jx.

sry - full hands:

Scoring: MP

---

.
I did indeed rise with the ace, playing RHO for the J. I then changed my mind ( ), and played the trump suit to drop the J. This failed as RHO has Jxx. Think I just got into a mental tangle thinking about RHO's weak 2♥ opener, and what that might mean for her spade holding.

[vuroth]

Having the 9 in your hand is different from X. In this case, the ace DOES win if RHO started with J or Jx.

You and partner have 17HCP between you. LHO has shown 7 HCP so far. With RHO having 6-10 say for his vulnerable 2♥ bid, there's still a whole lot of HCP unaccounted for. You really don't have solid info on who has the J♠ - anyone could have it.

It would be different if you and partner had 26-27 HCP between you. Now, after LHO shows up with the AK♦, the odds are very much in favour of RHO having the J♠, and the A♠ is more likely to be the right play.

0.02

[655321]

This is completely different from your original question. We have the T98 of spades not just x's, and we now have a whole hand.

Assuming LHO led the ♦AK and RHO signalled a doubleton, we can say that West has 2 Hearts and 4 Diamonds for 6 red cards, East has 6 Hearts and 2 Diamonds for 8 red cards. The ♠J won't make any difference to anyone's bidding, so all you have to go on is that LHO has more room in his hand for any card including the ♠J. So I would ruff the 3rd diamond with the ten. On the actual hand this loses so we only make 8 tricks instead of 9.

If you wanted to look deeper you could say that if LHO has Jxxx you still lose a trick by ruffing low (if the low spade ruff wins I would just play the ♠A next planning to draw trumps), but if RHO has the Jack you would never lose a trick after ruffing high and running the ♠T.

So you would compare the odds of LHO having J, Jx, Jxx with the odds of RHO having J, Jx, Jxx, Jxxx. If you assume that RHO would never open 2♥ with Jxxx of spades this still means playing LHO for the Jack is percentage. Anyway, I am not doing the math.