[Chamaco]

Scoring: MP

1S-(2H)-3H-(4H)
4S.........
After no further opps bids, NS reach 6S.
Opening lead: H Ace.

---

You play, at Matchpoints Pairs, this 6 spades contract.

West leads heart Ace, then thinks a little and shifts to a spade.
Assume intermediate-advanced E-W.


What is the best line to approach this contract ?
West has 1 trump, east 2 trumps.

Thanks all!

---------------
ADDED LATER: East-West do not play Michaels, with 55 they just overcall

[cherdano]

To me, this looks like a club guess (no squeeze around). I am pretty sure I will not try to drop the ♣Q, because with ♣Qxx opposite x opponents are more likely to have their bids up to 4♥ than with ♣Qx opposite xx. Whom to play for length in clubs? I would guess West, since he didn't use Michaels, and if he is 1=6=5=1, there are not that many hands that should bid 4♥ with East's 2=3=5=3 hand.

Arend

[inquiry]

Chamaco, on May 9 2005, 08:55 AM, said:

Dealer: South Vul: None Scoring: MP

♠ Q98xx ♥ 6 ♦ AKx ♣ Axxx ♠ AKJTx ♥ 987 ♦   ♣ KJTxx

1S-(2H)-3H-(4H) 4S......... After no further opps bids, NS reach 6S. Opening lead: H Ace.

You play, at Matchpoints Pairs, this 6 spades contract.

West leads heart Ace, then thinks a little and shifts to a spade.
Assume intermediate-advanced E-W.


What is the best line to approach this contract ?
West has 1 trump, east 2 trumps.

Thanks all!

I am probably going down, but I am going to play WEST for Qxx of clubs. He didn't use michaels cue-bid (and intermediate-advanced players know all about micheals) so I suspect he doesn't have six and probalby not five diamonds. Also, RHO probalby does have distribution here, in the form of singleton club for his 4H bid.

[Echognome]

No need to think. Just use Barry Crane's Rule: "The queen is over the jack in the minors and under the jack in the majors." Lay down the K and ride the J with confidence.

[pigpenz]

yes for Barry there was not guess for it, and if his expert partner tryied to use logic to count out the hand he still came unglues....they were Barry Rules!


you can try and play out the hand as much as you want to get some sort of count and the hand that has the most open spots available for cards is the one most likely to have the Q...maybe by a smidgeon unless one opponent is know to have a 5-7 card suit.

But from the actual auction....ruff out the hearts and play AKX♦'s that will give you some sort of count on the hand.

you will know
1.how many trumps west has
2.5-6 possible hearts
3.1-3 diamonds
4.1 club is leading to north

possible to know 10-12 of his cards

his partner you wont know as much
1.how many trumps
2.2-3 hearts
3.3diamonds
4.1 club

so you will have an idea of about 8 of cards

At Richard Pavliceks page i entered in
4 missing cards
3 holes for West
5 holes for East

71% that Q♣ should be with East
Now that doesnt make it a gaurantee, thats whats good about bridge!

But Still Barry Would Bang down ♣honor from south and then play J♣ letting it ride.

[pclayton]

Well, check if there's any surprises in the diamond suit. If there's none - this is a dead guess, although clubs probably aren't 4-0. No lightner from RHO and no underlead from LHO. If I has to choose I'd say the Lightner inference was 1000% but the underlead isn't.

What about 3-1 clubs? Would LHO choose a stiff club lead over the A♥? Only if he was awful - this only gets the contract -2. If clubs are 3-1, I don't think I'm getting this right.

I'm playing hearts for to be 5-4 (maybe 6-3). If LHO has a club void that puts him on: 1=5=7=0 or 1=6=6=0 (very unlikely!). If RHO has the club void and didn't lightner, LHO could have 1=5=3=4 or 1=6=2=4 (you'll see that when the diamond ruff happens).

[Fluffy]

Ben's line rates to be the best, West can have at most 1♠,6♥,4♦, so he has at least 2♣.

[Rebound]

I would like to see what happens in terms of what the opponents play if, after drawing trump, ending in hand, you ruff a heart, play 2 diamonds, pitching 2 clubs, then ruff a diamond and another heart. Anyway, I am suspicious enough of the switch to a trump at T2 to play West for the club Q pretty much regardless.

[Gerben42]

What surprises me that such a good player adheres to so such silly rules. Finessing West for ♣Qxx (West was the 2♥ bidder right?).

2 reasons: If someone has a singleton he is unlikely to have another one. In the case he had two singletons he might have shown a 2-suiter. Third the raise to 4 suggests East might have a singleton too, and it wasn't in trumps.

[Chamaco]

East-West do not play Michaels, with 55 they just overcall

[kenberg]

There is no true squeeze but that doesn't mean you can't fake it.


Win the trump in hand, ruff a heart high, trump to hand, ruff last heart high, trump to hand, trump: This gives:

...
...
AKx
Axx


x
...
...
KJTxx


Opponents hold four clubs and eight red cards. Cash the last trump. If West began with both minor queens, he may make a mistake here. At least he will probably need to think. If he has been paying attention he can probably see you do not have

Jxx
Kx

left in the minors and so he can throw a diamond, but this takes time for him to think through.


If he tosses a diamond without thought, I will play him for an original Qx in clubs. If he thinks and then tosses a diamond, I will pitch a diamond from the board, cash the King of clubs and run the Jack.

An essential feature of this line is that you cash no diamonds before their time.

Ken

[cherdano]

Chamaco, on May 9 2005, 04:37 PM, said:

East-West do not play Michaels, with 55 they just overcall

Ok, that changes inferences of course, but I still play West for 3 clubs. If he is 1=5=5=2,
then East is 2=4=5=2. There are not many ways to distribute the high cards to give both West a 2♥ bid and East a 4♥ bid: x AKxxx Qxxxx xx vs xx QJxx Jxxxx Qx? Close. Similar with 1=6=4=2 opposite 2=3=6=2.

If you give West 3 clubs and East club singleton, there are more ways to distribute the high cards to make them both have their bids.

Arend

[luke warm]

i'd just draw trumps, ruff last diamond, play ♣K then J, and come up with the ace whether west covers or not...

it is a guess, and i'm guessing '9 never'

[Fluffy]

Ok if no michael's I'll switch to Kenberg's line :-P.

[pigpenz]

how about the old Rabbi's rule.....do what is right at the table

[kenberg]

I like my pseudo-squeeze (fun if nothing else) but if I decide to go simply on probabilities then I am cashing the king of clubs and running the Jack. My reasoning:

First I rule out LHO having 1 or 0 clubs. For one thing, people get dealt nine or ten red cards much more often then they get dealt eleven or twelve. Further, with such extreme shape, LHO may well have bid 5H over 4S. I will also rule out LHO holding four clubs since presumably RHO would have played his lowest spot at trick one, LHO would have led a club, RHO would have ruffed, and I would not be in the running. So LHO has either two or three clubs. This means I will start the clubs with the king from my hand, and then play the Jack. If LHO plays the Queen I can work out the hand, so crunch time will come exactly when the play goes K-x-x-x followed by J-x. If LHO started with Qxx I must play low, if he started with xx I must rise. The point is that the choice will be Qxx on my left and x on my right versus xx on my left and Qx on my right, no other holdings need to be considered. It is correct that these holdings are about equally likely (both a priori and, maybe especially, after you assume five hearts and 1 spade on your left, four hearts and two spades on your right). So why run the J?

Let's consider the 4H bid on the right. I believe that anyone who would bid four hearts holding a 2-4-5-2 shape would also bid 4H holding 2-4-6-1, but not conversely. Some folks (myself, for example) would bid 4H with the club stiff but not, at equal vul mps, with club Qx. If you believe there are such folks (and whatever you personally would do with Qx you should still believe there are such folks) then you should take the 4H bid as evidence in favor of a stiff on your right. Look at it this way: You encounter this N-S distribution 100 times, each time with hearts bid on your left. On this basis only, half the time it is right to rise, half the time you should run the Jack. However, the fifty times you should run it will have given you more 4H bids than the fifty times you should rise. So with a 4H bid on your right you run it, and without the 4H bid you rise.

But the pseudo is more fun than cold mathematics. Also it may work better. It wins if clubs are 2-2 regardless of where the Queen is, and it wins if Qxx is on the left providing LHO also holds the Queen of diamonds (assuming that such a holding will force a long pause when LHO must discard from Qxx, Qxx). It would work against me if I held Qxx, Qxx.


Ken

[pigpenz]

at the point we play a club the percentages favor the Q♣ being with East about 70% of the time....but say we play a club to north and both opponents follow the odds change dramatically instead of ♣'s going 2-2 being 42% they go up to 53% of the time....now when you lead a club to the south hand if Q♣ doesnt show up with east you are still faced with deciding to play for qxx-xx or x-qxx.

[kenberg]

Once declarer rules out playing LHO for 0 or 1 clubs, he will play the club king and follow with the Jack. The only percentages that matter are those that apply after the play has been Kxxx followed by Jx? Another (time-independent) way of saying the same thing is that the only percentages that matter are the Qxx-x versus xx-Qx. My calculations give the odds as 6-5 in favor of xx-Qx, assuming that each opponent holds 6 cards in the majors and assuming that any possible consistent arrangement of the diamonds is as likely as any other (perhaps not really true since the 2H bid makes LHO a favorite to hold any given Queen).

Precisely, there are 3 ways to place x on the right and three ways to place Qx on the right. If you place x on the right then the 10 diamonds have to be placed 6 to the right, 4 to the left. If you place Qx on the right then the 10 diamonds must be divided 5-5. There are more ways to divide the diamonds 5-5 than 6-4 (with the 6 in a specified direction), in fact the ratio is 6/5. Thus the nine-ever rule, but these odds are not that great if there is anything else to go on. It seems to me that the fact (I claim it as a fact) that significantly more people would bid 4H with the x than would with Qx more than wipes out the 6-5 advantage. Of course if RHO might have three hearts this further favors Qx. It seems likely that ruffing hearts and then running trumps without touching diamonds is very likely to induce RHO to pitch his fourth heart if he has it (it is hard to believe he bid 4H with 3 trump and what must be very few values, but maybe so), so the distribution of hearts should be known by crunch time.

So we get to the choice. I still play for the drop if LHO pitched a diamond easily on the last trump and run the Jack if he seemed to be in thought (which might actually have been the need to let the dog out). As Tammy Wynette says, Stand By Your Plan. But then Tammy got a divorce.

Ken

[beatrix45]

I don't see how you can isolate a diamond or a heart threat, so squeeze isn't possible absent a suicidal blunder by opponents. So, try to count the hand. Hearts look to be 5-4. Spades will be as you find them. Ten missing diamonds may be anything from 5-5 to 4-6, even 3-7 (this would make RHO 3-7 in the red suits).

I would start by playing three rounds of spades, the most I can afford, before the opponents know the score. Keep the diamond void a secret as long as possible. If RHO wants to discard two hearts on the run of the spades, then I would try to ruff two hearts in order to to see what she discards on the third round of hearts. End in dummy and now play three rounds of diamonds. On this plan, maybe the opponents will feel they have to signal distribution honestly. If so, I will know what to do, maybe.

Failing anything else, LHO is more likely to have the club queen because of the HCP requirement for their initial overcall.

[P_Marlowe]

Finesse against East.

West has made a overcall, so should hold 5
cards at most, and since Nort-South have 4
cards in hearts between them, this gives East
at most 4.

If the hearts are 5-4, the a priori chance of
finding a special card outside the heart suit
favor East slightly.
The chances increase if West has a 6 card
suit, not likely because of the jump raise
made by East, but still possible.

You can find out, not 100% for sure, but with
a certain confidence, how good West's hearts
are, and/or how many hearts East has.

Also you can safely find out how many spades
East has, a single or a doubleton.
In case he holds a doubleton, you know 6 cards
in the East and 6 card in the West hand, but it
maybe, that the score is 7-5, improving the odds
for the finess against East.

With kind regards
Marlowe