[rmnka447]

Interesting hand to discuss decisions at matchpoints.

What is the likely contract elsewhere? -- I think all will agree 3 NT will probably be bid at most tables.

So how do you best play the hand at MPs?

Two major possibilities are being discussed -- combining chances by playing on ♦s or playing for the ♣ finesse immediately.

Combining chances increases the overall probability of making 9 tricks to 68% while risking an additional undertrick.

Taking the immediate ♣ finesse reduces the probability of making the contract to 50%, but also risks 1 less undertrick.

It seems like a simple decision. But, is it?

If ♦ do break 3-3, do you simply cash out for 9 tricks, or, do you now take the ♣ finesse for an additional trick(s)?

Clearly, at IMPS, combining chances and cashing out is right.

But at MPs, any time the ♣ finesse is right, you are making at least 11 tricks (and even 13 tricks when ♦s also break). So cashing out gets you a poor score versus those who find the winning finesse.

Another issue is if there is a way to avoid a ♠ switch should you take the ♣ finesse.


So I think I'm playing the hand as follows. Win the ♥ lead in dummy with the ♥ K. Cash the ♦ Q and ♦ K. Then I'm leading a low Club and finessing ♣ J from dummy. Hopefully, if the ♣ K is off side, this reveals the least about my other high card holdings and gives RHO more to think upon before switching.

[Fluffy]

gwnn, on 2012-July-10, 11:58, said:

Sorry for derailing your thread Fluffy.

When I saw those many responses I though there was a lot of debate upon wich minor to tackle first, a bit dissapointing to see the reality, but anyway its fine. There is no way to asses the total merits of one line over another since the spade switch might be clear or not and depends on the players.

I posted the hand because I didn't know what to do at the table, in the end I opted for one line, then I switched to other and even played spades myself to muddy the waters

[mr1303]

In a bad standard game, lead the Q of clubs. If they don't cover (or at least think about it), they don't have it. Clear cut in my book.

[32519]

Kindly post the full hand for us now.

Thanks

[gszes]

i am skeptical that our sequence is the most common. There seems to
be a much greater chance 3n would be played by p than by us (bidding
2n with club support and 2 little spades being a tad umm eccentric).

Helene_T hits on the combined chance of dia first followed by the
club finesse and I think this is best precisely because we got lucky
"right-siding" 3n and we have a legitimate chance of making it where
most will probably be wondering how many tricks they are going down
when a spade hits the table. Maximizing our chances at taking 9 tricks
seems to be the winner here. Playing on clubs first is doing nothing more
than returning the ball to the opps when the club is wrong and never giving
the 33 dia break a chance.

Think of it this way----if 3n makes (club finesse or no) we are probably going
to get a good score when we avoided a spade lead. It seems logical to try
and maximize or chances at keeping that good score by attacking dia first.

[JLOGIC]

One possibility is to win the heart and play the DQ and then a diamond to your hand and believe their count (I believe this is a situation where many would give honest count as holding up is a live possibility). This makes the spade switch more obvious but if diamonds appear to split you can run diamonds and then decide on the club hook later. At least you will not go down an extra undertrick if the club hook is off and diamonds dont split.

[BunnyGo]

I was wondering if winning in dummy to conceal the A, cross to diamond A, and hook the club gives the hardest time for the defense.

[rhm]

gwnn, on 2012-July-10, 07:28, said:

This is illegal according to most interpretations of the laws.

Why is it illegal to draw conclusions from the behavior of your opponents?
It is called table presence
Some are praised for being good at that (Lawrence, Hamilton etc)

Rainer Herrmann

[gnasher]

rhm, on 2012-July-11, 05:15, said:

Why is it illegal to draw conclusions from the behavior of your opponents?
It is called table presence

I think gwnn was arguing that "observing" the opponents is illegal.

[gwnn]

rhm, on 2012-July-11, 05:15, said:

Why is it illegal to draw conclusions from the behavior of your opponents?
It is called table presence
Some are praised for being good at that (Lawrence, Hamilton etc)

It depends on the manner and intensity of how you observe your opponents. My initial post was exaggerated, sorry about that.

[billw55]

mr1303, on 2012-July-10, 15:02, said:

In a bad standard game, lead the Q of clubs. If they don't cover (or at least think about it), they don't have it. Clear cut in my book.

It would take a pretty bad opponent to consider covering the queen with AJTxx in dummy. I would not rely on this inference.

gszes, on 2012-July-10, 15:48, said:

i am skeptical that our sequence is the most common. There seems to
be a much greater chance 3n would be played by p than by us (bidding
2n with club support and 2 little spades being a tad umm eccentric).

Helene_T hits on the combined chance of dia first followed by the
club finesse and I think this is best precisely because we got lucky
"right-siding" 3n and we have a legitimate chance of making it where
most will probably be wondering how many tricks they are going down
when a spade hits the table.

This is a good point. In fact, with spades wide open, I expect some pairs to play in 5♣. Assuming a spade lead, this is either = or -1, depending only on the hook.

[JLOGIC]

I am also of the school that many people would not bid this way. To me a "normal" auction might start 1D 2C 2D 2H 3C... or 1D 2C 2D 2N. In the former, 5C is very likely. In the latter 5C is also likely as I think south would bid 3C and north would bid 3H, but even if he raised to 3N it would be played by north who would likely lead a spade.

In that case, it is probably right to cash diamonds since RHO might have 5 spades anyways, but nothing is clear. I am not sure if trying to figure out if diamonds are 3-3 first is the play, or if trying to make it as hard as possible for RHO to shift to a spade is the play, they are both appealing. I would definitely try one of them.

Quote

If playing on clubs before diamonds really is good MP play then it just reinforces the "MP is not real bridge" argument I hear from time to time (one of the best players in the local club said this to me only Saturday).

I so disagree with this. This hand is enormously complex and massively interesting because it is matchpoints. It is a great hand, and such a stupid/easy hand at imps. This is why MP has much more skill than imps, there is just inherently more important decisions to make on each hand, more judgement to be used etc. I don't know what "real bridge" is, but I prefer the form where skill matters the most.

People thinking they're baller because they know how to play AJ8x opp K9xx for 1 loser to guarantee their contract so they're playing real bridge, instead of playing matchpoints where they have to jduge whether or not to play low to the jack, or king and low to the jack, all while a ruff is possible but not guaranteed if you lose the hook and you are not sure if the field will be in the same contract etc etc, is just lol. The 2nd is just way more interesting/complex/requiring more skill than the first.

[Zelandakh]

JLOGIC, on 2012-July-11, 08:48, said:

I so disagree with this.

FWiiW I also disagreed with him, albeit not as vehemently as I daresay you would have.

[awm]

JLOGIC, on 2012-July-11, 08:48, said:

I so disagree with this. This hand is enormously complex and massively interesting because it is matchpoints. It is a great hand, and such a stupid/easy hand at imps. This is why MP has much more skill than imps, there is just inherently more important decisions to make on each hand, more judgement to be used etc. I don't know what "real bridge" is, but I prefer the form where skill matters the most.

Can I plus-infinity this? Nominate for post of the year!

[billw55]

Matchpoints is really hard. For me the main drawback is the luck factor that is sometimes involved. At teams, my results come only from actions of my team or my opponents. At pairs, weird things can happen that are not attributable to either, rather to unexpected field behavior. Plus the random luck of which boards get played against which pairs.

I got fixed at matchpoints just the other night, I'll post a vent thread shortly.

[gnasher]

billw55, on 2012-July-11, 09:45, said:

Matchpoints is really hard. For me the main drawback is the luck factor that is sometimes involved. At teams, my results come only from actions of my team or my opponents. At pairs, weird things can happen that are not attributable to either, rather to unexpected field behavior. Plus the random luck of which boards get played against which pairs.

That's an argument for playing teams events, not an argument for playing IMPs.

[ArtK78]

billw55, on 2012-July-11, 09:45, said:

Matchpoints is really hard. For me the main drawback is the luck factor that is sometimes involved. At teams, my results come only from actions of my team or my opponents. At pairs, weird things can happen that are not attributable to either, rather to unexpected field behavior. Plus the random luck of which boards get played against which pairs.

I got fixed at matchpoints just the other night, I'll post a vent thread shortly.

The luck factor exists in all forms of the game, although I have to admit that it is more prevalent in pair events than in team events.

But the luck factor is not the issue that makes matchpoints difficult. It is the multiple factors of figuring out what your goal is on a particular hand and the best way to attain that goal. Sometimes a hand has more than one goal - a primary goal (what line will enable me to score the most matchpoints?) and a secondary goal (how can I minimize the damage and salvage a fair score if something goes wrong?). The hand in the OP presents these issues in many forms, as well as the luck factor.

The luck factor:

Either because of our auction or because LHO chose wrong (perhaps badly so) the lead is a heart and not a spade. So, the opps failed to take their 4, 5 or 6 tricks off the top. How do I take advantage of this? Or is this a non-factor, as the heart lead is perfectly normal (and someone else in the field got the bad luck of an opening spade lead)?

My goal:

Should I take the best possible line to make 9 tricks, or should I try for overtricks?

My secondary goal:

How many tricks will I wind up with if the initial line that I choose fails?

Both of these last two criteria must be evaluated in matchpoint terms taking into account the initial luck factor. It is frustrating to find out after the fact that the initial heart lead gave you a chance for a top by playing as conservatively as possible, maximizing your chances to make the hand (at the cost of overtricks), but that you thought it was a normal lead and chose to play for overtricks. Worse still is finding out that if you had taken a reasonable line that failed, but only by one trick, you would still get a good result compared to the majority of players who found a line that resulted in more than one off.

Helene discussed the various possible outcomes in her post. Trying to decide which of these outcomes is what you are looking for is often the hardest part of matchpoint play.

The fact that each hand in a matchpoint pairs event counts the same as all of the others means you really never have a chance to relax at matchpoints.

[JLOGIC]

Gnasher is 100 % correct obv, pairs will have much less luck ivolved than knockouts, however that is because of the format, not the form of scoring. I doubt anyone would think that MP pairs has more luck than imp pairs, or that the reisinger (BAM) has more luck than a swiss teams format, or as has been written many times on here that a BAM knockout would have more luck than an IMP knockout (even though BAM KOs are rarely or never played).

BAM KO would clearly be the most skill format, since MP has less luck than imps and KOs have less luck than any other format. I suspect that this is never run because the best teams would basically always win, a bad team would have basically zero chance of an upset in a long BAM KO event.

There is just no question that MP or BAM scoring always has more skill/less luck than their equivalent imp formats. This does not directly go against the "imps is real bridge" argument since "real bridge" is undefined, which is probably why it's such a stupid saying.

[SteveMoe]

To all voices (and you are many) giving life to the Matchpoint dimension of the decison Many Many plusses coming your way. Thanks!

I have 2 itches to scratch (please forgive if these need to be separate posts. I will comply if that helps:

1) No one has mentioned whether the prospect of 3=5 split in ♠ should factor into a decision to simply make the hand. I would like to better understand the full odds decision process for choosing overticks vs simply making...

and the related question:

2) How best to hone one's field estimation skills? This is far from an exact science and usually mis-ascribed to "luck".

Thoughts?

[JLOGIC]

SteveMoe, on 2012-July-11, 13:22, said:

2) How best to hone one's field estimation skills? This is far from an exact science and usually mis-ascribed to "luck".

Thoughts?

Since it's far from an exact science, I would go with don't ever worry about it. I see so many stupid plays/bids by otherwise good players who are trying to go with the field, or go against the field, or estimate the field but doing it horribly, or whatever.

Yes, there are some hands where it might be a relevant thing to do. THESE HANDS ARE EXTREMELY RARE. You must realize you read about/think about/talk about a grossly disproportionate amount of these hands because they are interesting theoretically, and offer possible debatable lines.

If you are not a superduper world class player, you would do much better to never think about it, and focus only on figuring out the hand an making the best play. Even on this hand, my suggested idea was to try and figure out if diamonds are 3-3 or not. If you can do this, then the field considerations are completely irrelevant. If you cannot even figure out what the best play is on most hands, then how can you figure out what the probabilities are that the field will be in 5C or 3N, that the field will play it from a different side, or that LHO will lead a spade? Even if this is a hand where oyu should be doign those things, those hands are EXTREMELY RARE IN REAL LIFE PLAY, and you might misapply this on many hands when it is basically a negligible amount of hands that need it to be done anyways, and end up making stupid/bad plays.