[lamford]

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Ten of spades lead. What's your line?

[mikeh]

I win in hand and lead a club.

Say LHO plays the Queen or Jack. Now I play the king and, unless LHO has been clever (playing an honour from QJ9 or QJ97….but he’d likely have led clubs with the latter), I’m guaranteed 2 tricks. He might play theJ from J9, a classic falsecard holding in many situations but unnecessary here and I’m not worrying about it. Otherwise I duck tge first club.

Say he plays the 9 on the first round…and it holds, with RHO playing the 7.

RHO probably won’t be falsecarding here.

Now on the second round we have to guess whether LHO started with Ace third (regardless of which non-ace he plays on the second round) or QJ7. I’d play him for the ace.see below for why.

Say LHO plays the 7 on the first round. Does RHO win the 9 or an honour and, if an honour, which…if the Ace, we’re not making so assume the Q or Jack.

Note that with AQJ we have no chance nor do we if he has a stiff.

The relevant cases are AH or QJ tight, where H is either the Q or the J

With QJ tight, this is a classic restricted choice situation. He will play either roughly 50% of the time. Few players are capable of coming close to truly randomizing and in any event we rarely play enough hands against any one opponent to form a feeling for their tendencies. My own view is that experts come close to random but intermediates or advanceds tend to play the queen more than half the time.

In any event, with AH he has no choice, so I’d play him for AH if he plays an honour on the first round

If RHO wins the 9 on the first round, LHO will, if we have any chance, play an honour on the second round and we have a pure guess…did he start with AHx or QJx?

Id play him for AHx. If he has 3 clubs, he rates to hold the Ace. If he has Hx we can’t win, so we have to assume he has 3. Since he’d never play the Ace from AHx, he is 3-2 likely to hold the Ace

This ignores the restricted choice issue. With QJx he may try to randomize which honour he plays, but it doesn’t matter. Since I need him to hold 3 clubs, the percentage is always to play the King.


Anyway, that’s what I’d think about at the table. This took a lot longer to write than to think about😀 which is my excuse if I’ve missed something

[lamford]

mikeh, on 2022-January-30, 12:06, said:

I win in hand and lead a club.

I don't need to add much to Mike's fine piece. It is indeed right to lead a low club from hand, and duck if West plays the 7 or 9, rise if he plays the J or Q. on the second round, if East has played a quack, you do the same on round two, led from hand, duck if West plays the 7 or 9, rise if he plays the J or Q.