An interesting hand from Wednesday's heat of the Children in Need Sims, played in a number of British clubs. Whether you are in 4H or the pushy 6H matters little, as it is matchpoints. North leads the nine of hearts, and you win with the jack, cross to the queen of hearts, North discarding the eight of spades (normal attitude) and you play a diamond to the king and North's ace. North exits with a diamond, and you win with the queen, and ruff a diamond high (South starting with ♦JTx which does you no harm). The singleton trump opening lead suggests a black suit finesse may fail, but do you now cash the ace of spades before crossing to dummy in trumps?
Squeeze or Other Sims hand
#1
Posted 2014-November-15, 08:13
An interesting hand from Wednesday's heat of the Children in Need Sims, played in a number of British clubs. Whether you are in 4H or the pushy 6H matters little, as it is matchpoints. North leads the nine of hearts, and you win with the jack, cross to the queen of hearts, North discarding the eight of spades (normal attitude) and you play a diamond to the king and North's ace. North exits with a diamond, and you win with the queen, and ruff a diamond high (South starting with ♦JTx which does you no harm). The singleton trump opening lead suggests a black suit finesse may fail, but do you now cash the ace of spades before crossing to dummy in trumps?
#2
Posted 2014-November-15, 09:57
club ace before going back to dummy with a trump. The advantage of cashing 1 top club first
is it at least makes a simple squeeze against rho a show up squeeze when you lead a club and
if the club Q does not appear that eliminates many distributional probabilities and may help
you decide to finesse or not.
There is a two part question here.
1. Do you really want 6 to make since if you are not in it?
2. Is the inference about black suit finesses losing really strong enough as to make a squeeze
a better proposition than a straight finesse? what about a straight finesse combined with trying
to ruff out the club Q?
The main problem with trying for a squeeze is that there are a rather large number of non squeeze
hands where simply trying to ruff our Qxx of clubs will give you what you need. lho has started out
with 4d 1h rho 3d 3h there are 8 spades missing and lho would be the favorite to have 5 of them and
thus only 3 clubs (with or without the spade k).
While it is not fancy and won't get your name in the papers trying to ruff out the club Q and falling
back on the spade finesse seems like the most solid plan overall.
#3
Posted 2014-November-15, 10:51
#4
Posted 2014-November-15, 11:27
#5
Posted 2014-November-15, 12:38
particular auction, where the very strong hand has leaped to game in hearts, the lead seems
abnormally safe. On top of that there is a solid minority (majority?) of players that believe
in attacking leads and would readily underlead the club Q especially QT instead of a singleton
trump. I am not against playing for a squeeze it just seems like too much of stretch to
automatically conclude it is better merely because of seeing the hated singleton heart lead.
#6
Posted 2014-November-15, 14:02
gszes, on 2014-November-15, 09:57, said:
I am not sure that this is correct thinking. You are only competing with those in four.
I cashed the ace of spades, and the top club and crossed with a trump and North's discomfort was apparent to the barman downstairs. I wondered if I should have not cashed the ace of spades, and played it as trump squeeze, gaining when South has Qxx in clubs. My thoughts were that some Norths could bare the king of spades and keep four clubs to the queen, when I would have to read the ending. Not that this would have occurred to this particular North.
#7
Posted 2014-November-15, 15:01
lamford, on 2014-November-15, 14:02, said:
lamford, on 2014-November-15, 14:02, said:
#8
Posted 2014-November-16, 01:01
#9
Posted 2014-November-16, 08:11
Good that you can see squeeze possibilities, but they shouldn't be based on just a lead surely? Yes, I agree, a trump lead may have cost the defence. It's nice and satisfying when the squeeze works, and you achieve something in the room that no-one else has done, but it shouldn't be the basis of "going against the odds".
#10
Posted 2014-November-16, 14:22
#11
Posted 2014-November-16, 14:53
Lovera, on 2014-November-16, 14:22, said:
I think I understand. You are correct that one can always pick up ♣Qxx in either hand, as well as both black honours in the same hand, but only if you know the original black-suit distributions. I agree with gnasher that it is very likely both black honours are with North, so the trump squeeze can rarely gain.
#12
Posted 2014-November-17, 09:16