[rogerclee]

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You have an uncontested auction to 4H, where north showed an extremely weak hand.

You win the SQ lead in hand and play a low diamond to the dummy, RHO wins and exits a club. You play DA and a diamond, and dummy's heart holds. Your play.

[wank]

edit: ignore

[rogerclee]

wank, on 2013-May-31, 23:06, said:

edit: ignore

wank snap got it right but I asked him to delete his answer to give more non-expert (or even expert) players a chance to think about it.

[lmilne]

rogerclee, on 2013-May-31, 23:18, said:

wank snap got it right but I asked him to delete his answer to give more non-expert (or even expert) players a chance to think about it.

We can pick up H/Hxxx (2 cases) by playing hearts from the top, and we can pick up x/QJxx (3 cases) by leading low from dummy now and taking the double hook. Both of these simple lines also pick up Hxxx/H.

If West has QJxx (3 cases) and a 3433 shape , we can pick up his trumps via a different line that also picks up all the stiff honors but seems to lose to QJxx on our right, and also loses to some 3-2 breaks with split honors. I don't think I can see a line that is definitely better than the double hook (but might be equal).

[PhilKing]

I am going to play the hand on the assumption that righty is not a beginner.

[GreenMan]

I couldn't see any reason not to take the double hook either, but that's pretty mundane analysis even for me. So I peeked at the hand record and reverse-engineered a line of thought that would lead to the winning play. (Much easier when you know the outcome!) I'll be interested to see if it's anything like how a better player would approach it at the table.

[JLOGIC]

Some hints for the double hookers, in spoilers for those who don't want them

Spoiler

How would you have played if RHO had shifted to a trump when winning the diamond?

Spoiler

Is there any danger in double finessing now?

[lmilne]

Ah, yeah. Suddenly makes sense now.
That would sick to go off when trumps are 3-2...

[rogerclee]

lmilne, on 2013-June-01, 22:36, said:

Ah, yeah. Suddenly makes sense now.
That would sick to go off when trumps are 3-2...

The main point isn't that you can go off on trumps 3-2, it's that you are not playing for anything, it's impossible for RHO to have QJxx since they would have broken up the position earlier.

At the table Jiang Gu declined to play the heart to create this position, and declarer fell from grace and immediately realized his error (this was in another match).

Another small point of interest is that, given this suit combination in a vacuum, RHO should split from QJ8x to cater to their partner having singleton 9 if declarer is known to have exactly 6 hearts headed by the AK (a big stretch), which balances QJxx vs Qxxx/Jxxx a bit.

[lmilne]

rogerclee, on 2013-June-01, 23:18, said:

The main point isn't that you can go off on trumps 3-2, it's that you are not playing for anything, it's impossible for RHO to have QJxx since they would have broken up the position earlier.

At the table Jiang Gu declined to play the heart to create this position, and declarer fell from grace and immediately realized his error (this was in another match).

Another small point of interest is that, given this suit combination in a vacuum, RHO should split from QJ8x to cater to their partner having singleton 9 if declarer is known to have exactly 6 hearts headed by the AK (a big stretch), which balances QJxx vs Qxxx/Jxxx a bit.

Yeah, once you realise that the double hook is zero percent it limits your options... I still hadn't decided whether I was going to play simple or try for the trump endplay. Ruffing a club and cashing a top heart then deciding seems to leave your options open unless the club ruff gets knocked off from Hx.

What was the layout on the hand? H/Hxxx?

edit: if nothing dropped I'd probably just play for the split, going down on trumps 3-2 is way too embarassing, seems like fancy play syndrome

[jdeegan]

Hmm... The ♥ finesse is just a slight favorite (roughly 3 to 2, I guess) in the absence of any inference from the fact that RHO did not shift to a ♥ when in with the ♦. Nor did LHO win the first ♦ trick. I probably have to lose a ♦, a ♠ and one ♥, so not losing 2♥ is the objective.

If ♥ are 3-2, I see almost no way to lose 2♥ if I take the double hook. I guess they could take a ♠ ruff and uppercut me with a fourth round of ♦ - possible, but not worth sweating too much imho. Holding the deadly stiff ♥ Q (or J), LHO is marginally less likely to have popped on the first ♦ - assuming he had a diamond honor. This whole hand is a problem in Bayesian (conditional probability) statistics that looks very close to 50-50 to me. Who is at the other table(s)? What might they do? What is the state of the match? Did the opponents know enough about the hand at trick two to be leading me down the garden path? So, maybe banging the ♥ from the top is best, by a little. Or not. Very nice problem hand, imho.

P.S. RHO's club shift (what spot was that???) might look logical from his as yet totally unknown hand.