It would really be nice to also have the "unrevealing" bidding sequence (or did it really went like 1S BW ... 6S ?).
I would start as you did in your hint, so let's assume x
♥ taken by East's Ace, and a diamond Back. If East (or West) would show you her hand, you could claim more than 99% of the time. Let's see how close we can come playing only single dummy.
Now depending on the really unrevealing sequence, West is a slightly favorite to have the
♥King, but I don't see how we can benefit from that. It just complicates the matter or assessing the chances of the different lines.
I see 2 main lines with many variants each :
- main line 1 : cash spades trying to avoid any overruff, then ruff a diamond, and try to produce the 12th trick from Hearts or clubs (Spades 2-2 : happy declarer) ;
- main line 2 : don't cash spades, try to combine the fall of Hx in Hearts, a diamond ruff, a club ruff with the ten.
In the main line 2, you can study different transpositions of plays (start with
♦ ruff, OR start with
♣Ruff w/ the Ten, OR try to establish a quick
♥Trick, OR start with a Club ruff with the Ten then cash
♠K... Oh geeeeee).
Main line 1 is the more easy to study, and the best solution I found was to cash the second spade (claim if 22, otherwise...) ruff a Heart (if 2nd honor falls claim, otherwise...) cash
♠Q, ruff
♦, ruff Heart (if 2nd honor falls claim), otherwise hope than someone has been squeezed in the rounded suits. This line is about 82% taking into account that East plays the
♥Ace even with A10x, in fear you could have the stiff King (it's really difficult to infer statistics from the Heart play at trick 2, the only thing being for sure being East has not AK10+). There is a very slight bonus in this line if East falsecarded his count in the Diamond suit : if West is 4-4 in the minors, he will have to guess whether I'm xx34 or xx43, and I suspect he will miss it most of the time (a 2% bonus
).
In the main line 2, most of the lines seem to fall between strictly below 80%, except the following successions of plays which lead to 80% : Cash AK
♣, ruff
♣ with the Ten, then ruff a Heart (claim if 2nd honor falls otherwise...) ruff a Diamond, cash
♠K, ruff a Heart.
All the lines are actually very close, and very difficult to separate at the table. The 82% of line 1 is only in theory : how likely is East to play the
♥Ace with Axxx allowing you to ruff out his pard King ? And what if He thinks I can ruff my minor suits without any problems anyway ?...
Anyway, I still would have played line 1, because :
1. I don't expect West to lead from a short QJx+ sequence on this bidding (
). When West Diamonds become longer, line 1 becomes stronger.
2. You can study Line 1 in a very short amount of time, and realize it's a very good one. Going through all the variants of line 2 would be embarassing ;
3. Rightly or wrongly, I always prefer to go down at trick 13
.
I guess others will find more to this intricated deal.
Cheers,
Help
wyman, on 2012-May-04, 09:48, said: