[sceptic]

http://online.bridgebase.com/cgi-bin/histo...11252153-172445

Hi, I am not looking for adulation, what I would like to know is whether you think I played this hand well or not (my personal thoughts are I played it very well and I was quite pleased with myself).

what I would like you to consider is, I saw the contract was in danger of going down, so the only way to avoid 3 spade losers was to do something unusual, so first opportunity I got I played the spade suit in the hope that opps would change suit and give me the contract by avoiding their obvious winners.

do you think I would have gotten away with this play against two experts ?

was I lucky against the opps I had (they are nice opps and I am not here to belittle anyone)

this is the hand

Scoring: IMP

---

West North East South

 -     -     1♥    Pass
 1♠    Pass  2♥    Pass
 Pass  Pass  

[ArcLight]

The heart lead by south was of great benefit to you, as well as North ducking! Imagine receiving a lead of the ♠ King.

Whats funny is Deep Finesse shows the correct play is ANY OTHER CARD than what South lead.

At that point you were short on entries to Dummy. Your lead of the ♠2 probably confused south, as it made South think you were weak in diamonds, and had the ♠ A 10. (Had the opponents Spade holding been swapped, you wouldnt have been happy with that line.)

Deception is great when it works, and in this case it did, as you got South to break Diamonds and kill pards King. Since it was a reasoned play by you, I think it was good. It wouldn't have occured to me at the table, but with dummy short of entries, why not take the gamble.

(South taking the ♣Ace on round one and putting dummy in with the ♦ didnt hurt either)

[hotShot]

I think you ask the wrong question here.

Lets assume South leads ♣A and follows up a ♣.
If you follow up ♣ north will ruff, and you will never make a trick with dummys hand again. If you play ♦ for the finesse you will be cut off as well. Locked to your hand you will loose 3♠, 1♣ and 2♥ at least one down.

The lead you got, is very helpfull. And i don't think it's an experts choice here.
Experts play carding signals, they won't decide what suit to play based on your action, but on partners signals. Trust your partner and mistrust your opponent! So your action is not likely to help you against an established partnership. But in a pickup partnership here at BBO even experts might not have an agreement over all aspects of signals, and you might get away with it.

So don't think about such tricks, think abot improving your partnership agreements.

I would have opend the hand as a SAYC weak 2, it describes your hand much better and helps partner to make the best decision possible.

[Flame]

Its very hard to judge such a line, you cant magger chances for a faked line, it seems like a good idea that worked very well, there are "honest" lines that have chances to make your contract, i would choose one of them.
You should be very pleased with yourself you made 10tricks where others made only 7!
I think your line might have succeed vs better players although not as good as here because they made more then 1 mistake.
However for future improvent i would suggest you should consntrate more on normal precentage lines.

[sceptic]

the trouble was the best line I could come up with was -1

[Flame]

sceptic, on Mar 20 2005, 09:47 AM, said:

the trouble was the best line I could come up with was -1

Why is that ?
After you won the first trick, you can see you have 4 sure losers: 3 spade losers, 1 club loser, in addition you have probebly 1 heart loser, with some chances to lose 2 hearts, and 1 diamond loser potential, now you can think of plans, the simplest plan would be to finnese the diamond imidiaetly (while you are still in dummy) to get rid of the diamond loser. Anthter plan you should think of is playing the K of club hope they take it , play 2 clubs and discard the diamond Q (or a spade) on the last club.
Im not saying those lines rock, especially not the second one, but those are normal lines which have chances to make the contract (as you can see a simple diamond finnese would make 2H for you)

[sceptic]

Quote

The heart lead by south was of great benefit to you, as well as North ducking! Imagine receiving a lead of the ♠ King.

if that had happened I would not have been doing this post I would be drowning my sorrows probably

[Double !]

I am going to dare to disagree with some respondents, and instead congratulate declarer for doing well on this hand. A lot of play threads have focused on devising the best technical line for playing a hand given an optimal lead. In the real world, luck, both good and bad in terms of opening leads, plays an important role. It then becomes an issue of attempting to maximize the benefits of or take advantage of the good luck. I'm not saying the line taken was or was not the technically optimal line, the opening lead helped determine what might or might not be optimal, but declarer was successful and did well on the board (next time you gotta bid these games!!!). I say "very well done" to sceptic, with the request that you not pull off such an illusion against me: I'm sure to fall for it.

[Free]

♠ is a nice distraction, to let opps play your good suits. However, the defense really sucked (sry Jillybean ) so it's not so much your own result.

[jillybean]

Free, on Mar 20 2005, 11:21 AM, said:

the defense really sucked (sry Jillybean  )

Agree! I have many moments of sheer stupidity eerrr ....maybe it was a misclick