[Jlall]

Clee gave me a good hand, I played it differently than declarer...and declarer was Balicki aka god. I am not sure which line is better, so figure I'd post it.

---

Assume x = smallest card. You are in 6C on the fast HK lead, but you had a very slow auction. Auction was:

2C 2S
3C 3H
3S 4H
6C

I will post Balicki's line and my line later after some people have responded.

Some hidden stuff:

If you choose to ruff a diamond at some point:

Spoiler

they are 4-3 and the Q falls on left on third round

.
If you choose to ruff a heart at some point:

Spoiler

everyone follows small.

If you choose to play AK of clubs at some point:

Spoiler

everyone follows small

edit: fixed hidden stuff

[pooltuna]

Jlall, on Dec 21 2009, 10:07 PM, said:

Clee gave me a good hand, I played it differently than declarer...and declarer was Balicki aka god. I am not sure which line is better, so figure I'd post it.

Dealer: ????? Vul: ???? Scoring: Unknown

♠ KQxxx ♥ T9xxx ♦ xx ♣ x ♠ Ax ♥ A ♦ AKTx ♣ AKJTxx

Assume x = smallest card. You are in 6C on the fast HK lead, but you had a very slow auction. Auction was:

2C 2S
3C 3H
3S 4H
6C

I will post Balicki's line and my line later after some people have responded.

Some hidden stuff:

If you choose to ruff a diamond at some point:   they are 4-3 and the Q falls on left on third round[/hidden.]
If you choose to ruff a heart at some point:  everyone follows small.[/HIDDEN]
If you choose to play AK of clubs at some point:   everyone follows small

my gut reaction is to play A♥, A&K♦, ruff a ♦, A♠, A&K♣, K&Q♠ and if applicable ruff a ♥

[xcurt]

Pooltunas line looks like the "normal" line, and it looks like it's basically on 4-3 diamonds, or 5-2 diamonds with the ♣Q falling before or after the third diamond is ruffed off.

The alternative is to play high trumps and then play for either 3-3 spades (0.355), or

* if only LHO guards hearts, many squeezes will work, probably you will play for a double squeeze with diamonds as the pivot
* if both opponents guard hearts, then you need either

-> a double guard squeeze (LHO needs to hold long spades and one of the two diamond quacks)
-> a spade-diamond simple squeeze against either opponent (requires that opponent to hold both diamond quacks and the long spades)

I guess the answer depends on what you think of the shotgun lead. Line 1 you are basically prostrating yourselves before the card gods. Balicki is a pretty good declarer (book recommendation -- The Bridge Magicians, btw, is excellent), so I guess he went in for line 2.

Edit -- I'm pretty sure line 2 is better. You need to make about half the time spades aren't 3-3 to catch up to line 1. You're making basically all the time LHO has HKQJ and most all the time LHO has the long spades.

Edit -- by "play high trumps," I mean 3 rounds.

Curt

[Jlall]

Curt:

All of the squeezes you say are possible, but that does not mean you can execute them all without giving up on others. It's like saying that in a 2 way finesse situation you can pick up the queen on either side.

Consequently I definitely question this statement:

Quote

You're making basically all the time LHO has HKQJ and most all the time LHO has the long spades.

[655321]

The lines seem to me

(1) drawing trumps from the top,

(2) ruffing a diamond, heart ruff back to hand, 2 top trumps, then a 3rd trump

(3) Tuna's line (same as 2, but after 2 top trumps start on the spades).

(1) makes whenever

there is a doubleton ♣Q (16%),
or (clubs 3-3 or 4-2 without the queen dropping and) spades are 3-3 (~24%),
or (clubs 3-3 or 4-2 without the queen dropping and) spades are 4-2 with a squeeze
(Perhaps QJ of diamonds with the 4 spades, perhaps West has the ♥J with either the long spades or the QJ of diamonds)
Just a simple spade-diamond squeeze comes to an extra ~8% so I think the total squeeze chances should be even more.

(2) makes when:

Diamonds are 4-3 and ♣Q is doubleton (~10%)
Diamonds are 4-3, someone had Qxx(x) of clubs, but the 4th diamond is not with the ♣Q (~20%)
Diamonds are 5-2, but the short diamond has a trump holding of Qx, Qxx, xxxx. (~15%)

The difference between (2) and (3): The chance of the ♣Q being in the short diamond hand is just over 50% (53% I think). Playing on spades instead is difficult to work out because even when spades are 3-3 LHO may have short hearts. But if we assume that playing spades works when they are 3-3, or when they are 4-2 and the doubleton spade has Qxx club I still make this less than 50% (36 + 9), so I think that line (2) is better than line (3)

It seems that (1) is best, but no doubt I have missed some possibilities (gnasher will correct any mistakes I am sure )

[Jlall]

655321, on Dec 21 2009, 11:20 PM, said:

The difference between (2) and (3): The chance of the ♣Q being in the short diamond hand is just over 50% (53% I think). Playing on spades instead is difficult to work out because even when spades are 3-3 LHO may have short hearts. But if we assume that playing spades works when they are 3-3, or when they are 4-2 and the doubleton spade has Qxx club I still make this less than 50% (36 + 9), so I think that line (2) is better than line (3)

Seems like you missed the chance of someone having a doubleton club and a doubleton spade? That is quite significant.

[655321]

Jlall, on Dec 21 2009, 11:24 PM, said:

655321, on Dec 21 2009, 11:20 PM, said:

The difference between (2) and (3): The chance of the ♣Q being in the short diamond hand is just over 50% (53% I think).  Playing on spades instead is difficult to work out because even when spades are 3-3 LHO may have short hearts.  But if we assume that playing spades works when they are 3-3, or when they are 4-2 and the doubleton spade has Qxx club I still make this less than 50% (36 + 9), so I think that line (2) is better than line (3)

Seems like you missed the chance of someone having a doubleton club and a doubleton spade? That is quite significant.

Yes you are right, I did miss that.

That is ~6% extra, making line (3) very close to line (2) but still a bit worse if my numbers are right.

[xcurt]

Jlall, on Dec 21 2009, 11:18 PM, said:

Curt:

All of the squeezes you say are possible, but that does not mean you can execute them all without giving up on others. It's like saying that in a 2 way finesse situation you can pick up the queen on either side.

Consequently I definitely question this statement:

Quote

You're making basically all the time LHO has HKQJ and most all the time LHO has the long spades.

True. My oversight was they are going to win the club and play a diamond, and now I don't have the AKx vs x menace any more. I come down to this.

---

I wrote out a long analysis but it's too lengthy to reproduce here. Assuming LHO has the spade guard, when LHO has HKQJ he has to come down to SJTx, HJ and either red pitch works. I can't very often pitch a spade since it gives up on S 3-3. Therefore, when LHO does not have HKQJ he will often pitch a heart, since this forces me to pitch the spade from dummy to succeed.

All of this means I need the spades on the left and one of (HKQJ on the left) or (successful guess as to LHO's other card). I have some help with the latter because I get to watch for LHO pitching a diamond quack. So let's say I can read him more than half of the time for his other card. Let's say LHO has the HJ roughly half the time with his presumed HKQ. And I still can't do the math because of the need to pitch a spade some of the time....

[awm]

My first thought is to play for a squeeze line. This means clubs from the top. When I regain the lead, I'll play for the following end position:

---

On the last club, if the ♥T isn't good I'll pitch it. This line combines:

(1) If LHO started with ♥KQJ, it's a double squeeze.
(2) If the ♦QJ are with the long spades it's a simple squeeze on the pointed suits.
(3) If spades are 3-3 of course I'm cold.

As a rough estimate, LHO is marked with the ♥KQ, so case (1) should be about 1/2. Spades dividing are about 1/3 of the remaining times. I'm already up to about 2/3 to make, plus I get to add in case (2) which is probably about 1/4 of the remaining times. This comes to roughly 75%.

The various other lines mostly need diamonds 4-3. There's some slight chance to make if the diamonds don't divide (like clubs 3-3 with the club queen and short diamonds together) but there's also some chance to go down when diamonds do divide (depending on the exact line chosen). I doubt the odds will get much better than the odds of diamonds 4-3, which is a lot less than the roughly 75% I came to.

Edited: Okay, I see it's not quite this good, since if LHO has ♥KQJ and a diamond guard he can guard both reds and RHO can guard (presumably) the spades. But this still combines LHO with all three heart honors and the spade guard, either opponent with the only diamond guard and the spade guard, and spades 3-3. I still think it's better than the ruffing line.

[gnasher]

I thought you were going to tell us that you'd gone for 1100 in a fetid weak jump overcall.

I'd play clubs immediately, because it doesn't commit me to playing for a particular layout until after I've seen some discards. The defenders don't have second sight, so in the course of sorting out who's guarding each suit they'll have to tell each other something about their hands.

I think this is the bridge player's line - backing your ability to read their discards rather than relying on a small difference in percentages (if there is one). The other lines are for robots. I say this even though my friends often compare my table presence with that of an ashtray - it's easier to pretend on BBF than in real life.

A few more thoughts:

- Finding out the club layout may help us to judge the heart layout. If LHO has a trump trick, the heart lead doesn't tell us much, but if RHO has ♣Q there's a good chance that LHO's hearts are headed by KQJ. I don't think he'd lead a fast heart from something like xx KQxx Qxxx xxx, knowing that there were five on his left.

- If LHO wins the third club, the defence of playing a diamond probably won't work, because it will leave only one defender guarding the diamonds. If the diamond honours are split, it will also look very unattractive from West's point of view.

- Comparing double squeezes, in the absence of other information: using diamonds as the pivot is clearly better than using spades as the pivot. We know that only one player guards the spades, but we don't know whether the diamond guard is divided or not.

- 655321 is at least as good at arithmetic as I am, so I'm not going to waste my time on checking his figures.

[Vilgan]

On perfect defense I think I like pooltuna's line better. In real life, I think the squeeze might work better as I'm not sure a diamond return is clear even at top levels.

Non diamond return I play for the following position:

---

and you get a classic double squeeze if LHO has the J in addition to the KQ. Makes with the various situations adam described. I'd actually put the J in with KQ at more than 50% given the lead... with KQx(x?) someone might not lead a heart while with KQJ its clear.

Diamond return sucks as I now basically need LHO to have the long spades AND the J of hearts I think.

[Fluffy]

looks like double squeeze to me, diamond ruff requires too much, it might even be overruffed from 3 small to start with. I'd start with ♣AKJ and set up the squeeze, be sure of keeping 2 diamonds from dummy.

[stjk]

I would choose line 3: start with AKT of C.

[Jlall]

gnasher, on Dec 22 2009, 06:49 AM, said:

I thought you were going to tell us that you'd gone for 1100 in a fetid weak jump overcall.

I'd play clubs immediately, because it doesn't commit me to playing for a particular layout until after I've seen some discards. The defenders don't have second sight, so in the course of sorting out who's guarding each suit they'll have to tell each other something about their hands.

I think this is the bridge player's line - backing your ability to read their discards rather than relying on a small difference in percentages (if there is one). The other lines are for robots. I say this even though my friends often compare my table presence with that of an ashtray - it's easier to pretend on BBF than in real life.

A few more thoughts:

- Finding out the club layout may help us to judge the heart layout. If LHO has a trump trick, the heart lead doesn't tell us much, but if RHO has ♣Q there's a good chance that LHO's hearts are headed by KQJ. I don't think he'd lead a fast heart from something like xx KQxx Qxxx xxx, knowing that there were five on his left.

- If LHO wins the third club, the defence of playing a diamond probably won't work, because it will leave only one defender guarding the diamonds. If the diamond honours are split, it will also look very unattractive from West's point of view.

- Comparing double squeezes, in the absence of other information: using diamonds as the pivot is clearly better than using spades as the pivot. We know that only one player guards the spades, but we don't know whether the diamond guard is divided or not.

- 655321 is at least as good at arithmetic as I am, so I'm not going to waste my time on checking his figures.

Ok, I also thought that just playing clubs and planning on hopefully reading the situation and probably playing a double squeeze with a diamond pivot was the right line. I also noted what xcurt said about how the opps should play a diamond when in with the CQ, especially RHO. LHO might have to play an H from Hxx to give me a guess.

Balicki chose to ruff a diamond, and then played AK of clubs followed by spades which I thought was the right line after ruffing a diamond.

On the actual hand LHO has 4333 with one diamond honor and the CQ and no HJ, so after ruffing a diamond, playing clubs would have worked.

If you pound 3 rounds of clubs it is not clear what would happen but you COULD make it obviously.

[Winstonm]

I think I am going with the AK and J of clubs, pitching 1 spade and 1 heart.
The best return for the defense I think then is a spade. I will win in hand, draw the last trump, and cash 1 high diamond. I then run the trump.

My idea is to win 12 tricks when the spades are 3-3 but also to avail an extra chance if the spades are unbalanced but the heart guards are shared by playing for the extra chance of a guard squeeze.

Unless something is real strange, LHO would have to reach this position:

J10x
Q
Q or J

and will have to throw the diamond else two more spades squeezes East in hearts/diamonds.

[xcurt]

Jlall, on Dec 22 2009, 04:45 PM, said:

gnasher, on Dec 22 2009, 06:49 AM, said:

I thought you were going to tell us that you'd gone for 1100 in a fetid weak jump overcall.

I'd play clubs immediately, because it doesn't commit me to playing for a particular layout until after I've seen some discards.  The defenders don't have second sight, so in the course of sorting out who's guarding each suit they'll have to tell each other something about their hands.

I think this is the bridge player's line - backing your ability to read their discards rather than relying on a small difference in percentages (if there is one).  The other lines are for robots.  I say this even though my friends often compare my table presence with that of an ashtray - it's easier to pretend on BBF than in real life.

A few more thoughts:

- Finding out the club layout may help us to judge the heart layout.  If LHO has a trump trick, the heart lead doesn't tell us much, but if RHO has ♣Q there's a good chance that LHO's hearts are headed by KQJ.  I don't think he'd lead a fast heart from something like xx KQxx Qxxx xxx, knowing that there were five on his left.

- If LHO wins the third club, the defence of playing a diamond probably won't work, because it will leave only one defender guarding the diamonds.  If the diamond honours are split, it will also look very unattractive from West's point of view.

- Comparing double squeezes, in the absence of other information: using diamonds as the pivot is clearly better than using spades as the pivot.  We know that only one player guards the spades, but we don't know whether the diamond guard is divided or not.

- 655321 is at least as good at arithmetic as I am, so I'm not going to waste my time on checking his figures.

Ok, I also thought that just playing clubs and planning on hopefully reading the situation and probably playing a double squeeze with a diamond pivot was the right line. I also noted what xcurt said about how the opps should play a diamond when in with the CQ, especially RHO. LHO might have to play an H from Hxx to give me a guess.

Balicki chose to ruff a diamond, and then played AK of clubs followed by spades which I thought was the right line after ruffing a diamond.

On the actual hand LHO has 4333 with one diamond honor and the CQ and no HJ, so after ruffing a diamond, playing clubs would have worked.

If you pound 3 rounds of clubs it is not clear what would happen but you COULD make it obviously.

OK, I thought through this some more. Agree with gnasher's point that the shotgun HK lead strongly indicates either ♥KQJ, or a natural trump trick. Also pretty sure RHO would always return a diamond after winning his trump (what else would he do?). LHO will sometimes return a diamond.

So, if RHO wins the trump and returns a diamond, I'm going to be reduced to playing for either a heart-spade simple squeeze on LHO, or spades 3-3, or a diamond-spade simple squeeze on either opponent. I can combine all these chances. Without any vigorish for switching to the double guard squeeze line if I read their cards, or for the increased likelihood of the heart guard being isolated, I get (assuming we have a trump loser, if we have no trump loser then everything works)

0.355 + (1-0.355)/2*(1/2+1/4)+(1-0.355)/2*(1/4) = 0.68 when the CQ is on the right.

Assuming LHO always has the HJ or the CQ, the above rises to 0.84. This won't always be the case, but sometimes I'll get to execute the double guard squeeze.

If LHO wins the trump and returns a diamond I'm no worse off. I get some additional choices in the ending, plus some vigorish that LHO might not return a diamond. So I think my Line 2 (which I think is Justin's line) is something like 80% to make.

Obviously, on the actual hand, you get into the area of game theory, because you need to give up on 3-3 spades to execute the double guard squeeze.

Curt

[655321]

xcurt, on Dec 22 2009, 10:06 PM, said:

OK, I thought through this some more.  Agree with gnasher's point that the shotgun HK lead strongly indicates either ♥KQJ, or a natural trump trick.  Also pretty sure RHO would always return a diamond after winning his trump (what else would he do?).  LHO will sometimes return a diamond.

So, if RHO wins the trump and returns a diamond, I'm going to be reduced to playing for either a heart-spade simple squeeze on LHO, or spades 3-3, or a diamond-spade simple squeeze on either opponent.  I can combine all these chances.  Without any vigorish for switching to the double guard squeeze line if I read their cards, or for the increased likelihood of the heart guard being isolated, I get (assuming we have a trump loser, if we have no trump loser then everything works)

0.355 + (1-0.355)/2*(1/2+1/4)+(1-0.355)/2*(1/4) = 0.68 when the CQ is on the right.

Assuming LHO always has the HJ or the CQ, the above rises to 0.84.  This won't always be the case, but sometimes I'll get to execute the double guard squeeze.

If LHO wins the trump and returns a diamond I'm no worse off.  I get some additional choices in the ending, plus some vigorish that LHO might not return a diamond.  So I think my Line 2 (which I think is Justin's line) is something like 80% to make.

Obviously, on the actual hand, you get into the area of game theory, because you need to give up on 3-3 spades to execute the double guard squeeze.

Curt

It doesn't make any difference to your conclusions, but I think your numbers might be a little out.

I think your second term ((1-0.355)/2)*(1/2+1/4) represents squeezing LHO if he has 4 or more spades with either the ♥J or ♦QJ? If so, you are double counting the times LHO has everything.

Also when a suit breaks 4-2, the chances of 2 cards (e.g the QJ of diamonds) being in the 4 card hand is much less than the a priori 1/4 (or 24%) - I make it 19% that they are with the 4 card holding, and 29% that they are with the 2 card holding. (similarly with a 5-1 spade break, it is 35% that they are both with the singleton spade compared with the 15% chance that they are both with the 5 card holding)

Probably we should be making some vacant space adjustments because of the lead of the ♥K, but that gets a bit tricky.

[Jlall]

Disagree that the fast HK means anything beyond just having the KQ of hearts. I mean it took a long time for the auction to happen, so they had time to think during that, but just looking at the auction it's obvious the opponents have good spades and good clubs, I would find it completely normal to lead from my KQ of hearts pretty much regardless of my hand.

I thought this was a really interesting hand, nice analysis everyone thanks for the thoughts!

[xcurt]

655321, on Dec 22 2009, 10:43 PM, said:

xcurt, on Dec 22 2009, 10:06 PM, said:

OK, I thought through this some more.  Agree with gnasher's point that the shotgun HK lead strongly indicates either ♥KQJ, or a natural trump trick.  Also pretty sure RHO would always return a diamond after winning his trump (what else would he do?).  LHO will sometimes return a diamond.

So, if RHO wins the trump and returns a diamond, I'm going to be reduced to playing for either a heart-spade simple squeeze on LHO, or spades 3-3, or a diamond-spade simple squeeze on either opponent.  I can combine all these chances.  Without any vigorish for switching to the double guard squeeze line if I read their cards, or for the increased likelihood of the heart guard being isolated, I get (assuming we have a trump loser, if we have no trump loser then everything works)

0.355 + (1-0.355)/2*(1/2+1/4)+(1-0.355)/2*(1/4) = 0.68 when the CQ is on the right.

Assuming LHO always has the HJ or the CQ, the above rises to 0.84.  This won't always be the case, but sometimes I'll get to execute the double guard squeeze.

If LHO wins the trump and returns a diamond I'm no worse off.  I get some additional choices in the ending, plus some vigorish that LHO might not return a diamond.  So I think my Line 2 (which I think is Justin's line) is something like 80% to make.

Obviously, on the actual hand, you get into the area of game theory, because you need to give up on 3-3 spades to execute the double guard squeeze.

Curt

It doesn't make any difference to your conclusions, but I think your numbers might be a little out.

I think your second term ((1-0.355)/2)*(1/2+1/4) represents squeezing LHO if he has 4 or more spades with either the ♥J or ♦QJ? If so, you are double counting the times LHO has everything.

Also when a suit breaks 4-2, the chances of 2 cards (e.g the QJ of diamonds) being in the 4 card hand is much less than the a priori 1/4 (or 24%) - I make it 19% that they are with the 4 card holding, and 29% that they are with the 2 card holding. (similarly with a 5-1 spade break, it is 35% that they are both with the singleton spade compared with the 15% chance that they are both with the 5 card holding)

Probably we should be making some vacant space adjustments because of the lead of the ♥K, but that gets a bit tricky.

right. that middle term is 1/8th high due to sometimes lho has both key holdings. so subtract about 8%. i'll stand by my conclusion that the squeezes line is better.

[dake50]

Why aren't you in 6S? That is much easier to calculate chances.

I like D-ruff plan as it saves mental energy by a simple plan even if it is shy a few percents. Save mental energy pays on later hands in a long contest.