[apollo1201]

MP, red against green, last board facing a usually good partner who was very off today (and heading towards well below 50 vs 55-60 when she is normal)

LHO deals and opens 1S, partner passes and RHO bids 2H, while you are looking at

-
J
J754
AKQJT982

You risk 5C, maybe it is 500 against game, maybe it is 5-800 against slam.

Sure enough, 5H on the left, 6H on the right.

And now? Hero or coward?

[jillybean]

Hero, pass. My partner is still in the auction.

[apollo1201]

 jillybean, on 2026-October-31, 08:36, said:

Hero, pass. My partner is still in the auction.

My question was on the lead🤣🤣

Of course an easy pass, but green vs red it is a cheap 7C (good only if 6 makes and not 7 where you might push them).

[WasWinM]

A possible heart trick and an ace? I pass.

[jillybean]

apollo1201, on 2026-October-31, 09:28, said:

My question was on the lead����

Of course an easy pass, but green vs red it is a cheap 7C (good only if 6 makes and not 7 where you might push them).

haha, that's funny

Becuase its a BBF question I want to lead the ♥J, but I'd lead ♣A at the table

[pescetom]

I lead clubs and have some hope of taking the first two tricks (partner looks to be 6430 or 5431 or similar).

[kerkido]

 jillybean, on 2026-October-31, 11:16, said:

Becuase its a BBF question I want to lead the ♥J, but I'd lead ♣A at the table

Because it's a BBF question the correct lead is of course the ♣2 to partner's 7 to get a spade ruff But I'm not doing it at MPs. I'll lead a club winner but low enough to ensure partner will ruff with a void.

[mikeh]

kerkido, on 2026-October-31, 12:19, said:

Because it's a BBF question the correct lead is of course the ♣2 to partner's 7 to get a spade ruff But I'm not doing it at MPs. I'll lead a club winner but low enough to ensure partner will ruff with a void.

It’s not clear but if one is playing partner for a void, lead the Queen. However, imo, the odds of partner being void in clubs are somewhere between zero and very low, tending towards zero. Closer to zero, by a wide margin. Anyone who thinks they can cash 2 club tricks is insulting their opps…of course that insult is occasionally justified. But we are missing 5 clubs and for partner to be void requires clubs 4-1 or 3-2, and that’s virtually impossible, as are the chances of RHO bidding 6H with 2 or 3 clubs.

It’s a slam. At imps the club 2 is clear. If they have a guess in either major, they’re not playing you for the missing honour. The club 2 loses at imps only when we had a natural club trick but partner lacks the 7 (or foolishly ducks from 7x) and partner has an unavoidable side winner.

But at mps….hmmm….tye problem is that we can’t really assess whether the field will bid slam. In a typical mp field, if we sense that our opps are good players, then slam may well be missed by many. In which case we need the club 2 on the table. If we think that our opps are basically average or worse, then the slam is probably clear to bid and now we can’t risk the overtrick. All imo, obviously.

[pescetom]

 mikeh, on 2026-October-31, 14:18, said:

It’s not clear but if one is playing partner for a void, lead the Queen. However, imo, the odds of partner being void in clubs are somewhere between zero and very low, tending towards zero. Closer to zero, by a wide margin. Anyone who thinks they can cash 2 club tricks is insulting their opps…of course that insult is occasionally justified. But we are missing 5 clubs and for partner to be void requires clubs 4-1 or 3-2, and that’s virtually impossible, as are the chances of RHO bidding 6H with 2 or 3 clubs.

It’s a slam. At imps the club 2 is clear. If they have a guess in either major, they’re not playing you for the missing honour. The club 2 loses at imps only when we had a natural club trick but partner lacks the 7 (or foolishly ducks from 7x) and partner has an unavoidable side winner.

But at mps….hmmm….tye problem is that we can’t really assess whether the field will bid slam. In a typical mp field, if we sense that our opps are good players, then slam may well be missed by many. In which case we need the club 2 on the table. If we think that our opps are basically average or worse, then the slam is probably clear to bid and now we can’t risk the overtrick. All imo, obviously.

I may well be wrong, but remain skeptical about your analysis of "virtually impossible" void in clubs.
I tried to simulate it in Dealer but it seems unable to parse a void of spades in the predeal statement.
Thanks if anyone with more experience can explain how to do it or confirm the limitation.

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2026-October-31, 17:02, said:

I may well be wrong, but remain skeptical about your analysis of "virtually impossible" void in clubs.
I tried to simulate it in Dealer but it seems unable to parse a void of spades in the predeal statement.
Thanks if anyone with more experience can explain how to do it or confirm the limitation.

Think about the bidding. How many clubs does South have to bid slam?

He will not have 2. He might have 3 but that risks two rounds of clubs, both north and east holding 1 or, worse, north holding a doubleton…say 5=5=1=2.

So South might have 4? That’s a lot of club losers to deal with.

It’s not impossible but I think it’s incredibly unlikely that any competent pair would bid 6H with 5 small clubs between them. Maybe your opps enjoy going down in slam on the opening lead…mine don’t.


Leaving aside the inferences from the bidding…why one would ignore the bidding or assume that the opps are *****s is a mystery….just think about percentages. We are missing 14 minor suit cards, 5 clubs and 9 diamonds. Shuffle those 14 cards and give north 3 or 4 of them. Do you think it likely that he is 2=2 or 1=3 minors? If he is 1=3 minors, south has to have bid 6H on xx in clubs, if east is void. If north is 2=2, South must have bid 6H on xxx in clubs. And so on. Edited to remove typos describing north as 2=3 minors rather than 2=2

[bluenikki]

pescetom, on 2026-October-31, 17:02, said:

I may well be wrong, but remain skeptical about your analysis of "virtually impossible" void in clubs.
I tried to simulate it in Dealer but it seems unable to parse a void of spades in the predeal statement.
Thanks if anyone with more experience can explain how to do it or confirm the limitation.

How do you simulate opponents' hopes and fears?

[DavidKok]

pescetom, on 2026-October-31, 17:02, said:

I may well be wrong, but remain skeptical about your analysis of "virtually impossible" void in clubs.
I tried to simulate it in Dealer but it seems unable to parse a void of spades in the predeal statement.
Thanks if anyone with more experience can explain how to do it or confirm the limitation.

• In this case you can specify the other 13 cards with

  predeal south HJ, DJ754, CAKQJT982

  (I've chosen a table seating). This is by far the fastest method, as the 'predeal' command first assigns those cards and then deals the remaining ones, while the methods below generate random hands and then toss them out if they fail to meet the requirements.
  
• If you do not want to predeal the whole hand but still guarantee south is void in spades you can use

  condition spades(south)==0

  Keep in mind if you want to use multiple conditions you have to concatenate them with AND (&&) operators, dealer does not support multiple 'condition' statements.
  
• Lastly you can also achieve this with the 'shape' command, which is allegedly faster than the 'spades' command but still way slower than the 'predeal' option. The statement would then be

  condition shape(south, 0xxx)

  The symbol 'x' is the wild card of the shape command, so this includes all distributions with a spade void. You are only allowed to have 64 'shape' commands in a single dealer script, and I've hit that limit on a few occasions.

In my personal simulations I use a lot of boolean logic, e.g. I will create a boolean such as

SouthHasFiveSpades = (spades(south) >= 5)

and later combine these through boolean logic to create the condition I want to filter for (capturing the entire auction) and the criterion I am evaluating. Often this is an average double dummy score difference, tricks distribution or length distribution using a command such as

action average(score(nv, z3NT, dds(south, notrump)) - score(nv, z4H, dds(south, hearts)))

or

action frequency(diamonds(north), 0, 5)

or

action frequency(SouthHasFiveSpades, 0, 1)

[apollo1201]

Thanks all for these very good questions that were my reasoning. Will partner have a trick. Can they be void in C? I like the intermediate club lead that was suggested in that configuration.

As it was the last board, I decided for the fun and lead the C2.

Dummy tables trumps then the C7 and I think man you screwed. Thankfully the C3 appears, then 6 spandes by AK and a sg D.

I hold my breath while declarer calls for small. Partner puts rue 6 and bewildered says did I just won the trick with the 6?

Everyone says yes, so she continues with…another C. Which is not surprising considering her play the whole afternoon.

A 20% board, lots of slams making, some not called and some 6S going down as partner has J9xx over AKT 6th in dummy.


Conclusion: these spectacular under leads only work in books😁😁😁😁

[bluenikki]

apollo1201, on 2026-November-01, 02:59, said:

Thanks all for these very good questions that were my reasoning. Will partner have a trick. Can they be void in C? I like the intermediate club lead that was suggested in that configuration.

As it was the last board, I decided for the fun and lead the C2.

Dummy tables trumps then the C7 and I think man you screwed. Thankfully the C3 appears, then 6 spandes by AK and a sg D.

I hold my breath while declarer calls for small. Partner puts rue 6 and bewildered says did I just won the trick with the 6?

Everyone says yes, so she continues with…another C. Which is not surprising considering her play the whole afternoon.

A 20% board, lots of slams making, some not called and some 6S going down as partner has J9xx over AKT 6th in dummy.


Conclusion: these spectacular under leads only work in books😁😁😁😁

In a (in?)famous deal, Forquet _doubled_ and then underled. His partner (not Garozzo yet, I believe) got the message and gave Forquet his ruff.

[apollo1201]

 bluenikki, on 2026-November-01, 05:47, said:

In a (in?)famous deal, Forquet _doubled_ and then underled. His partner (not Garozzo yet, I believe) got the message and gave Forquet his ruff.

Terrific!! I doubt this would have awaken my partner, though 😝

[pescetom]

DavidKok, on 2026-November-01, 01:00, said:

In this case you can specify the other 13 cards with

predeal south HJ, DJ754, CAKQJT982

Thanks, that was the detail that eluded me, I am used to specifying without naming the suits which fails if there are no cards in a suit.

And of course the simulation using rough and ready logic for each bid coincides with what more lucid thought suggests, near zero possibility of a void (about 48% probability of 3 cards).