[han]

Matchpoints, red against white.

xx
A10x
AJxx
AQJx

x
KJxx
Kxxx
xxxx

(2D*) - Dbl - (3H*) - p
(3S) - Dbl - (4S) - 4NT
(p) - 5C - (p) - 5D
all pass.

2D was multi, 3H was pass or correct, the second double showed a strong takeout.

Both clubs and diamonds split 3-2, the diamond queen is onside but the club king is offside. The heart guess makes the difference between a near-top and a near-bottom.

Opener was 6-2-2-3 and responder 4-4-3-2, who do you play for the queen?

[655321]

Where is the queen?

OK, if the diamond queen is onside, then none of 'A', 'B' or 'H' can be the Queen, so I guess 'V'.
But then you made it trickier by telling us that the club queen is offside, so the queen cannot be 'A', 'B' or 'V.
Hmm.

Then, maybe the 2♦ opener has shown up with 11HCP therefore the Queen is with East.



But I am guessing that the known HCP are such that either side could have the Queen, then I would just play for the queen to be with the 4 card holding instead of the 2 card holding, and not try to second guess East's reasons for bidding only to the 3 level in Hearts, but the 4 level in Spades.

[gwnn]

Aas
Heer
Vrouw
Boer

Han taught me these names, but I had to look them up again

Did defence lead spades? What do we know about the honours?

[han]

I'll edit my post, sorry.

[whereagles]

Well, it obviously depends on the info we got from the spade leads but a priori we finesse through the long hand. Where's the catch?

Has West been reading Zia books as of lately? If so, he might well have preempted with Qx Qx on the reds, precisely so as to have stuff finessed through pard. Is that it?

[gnasher]

Where are the spade honours?

[han]

It looks like preemptor has the king of spades and his partner the AQ. You don't know about the jack.

[gwnn]

(assuming opener has the jack for simplicity's sake:)

AQxx
?xxx
xxx
Kx

I suppose he's more likely to bid 4S without the heart queen than with, but this edge is covered by noise inherent of modelling humans and isn't large enough to change a 66-33 underdog into a favourite.

KJxxxx
Qx/xx
Qx
xxx

I don't think there's a significant difference of likelihoods here. It's already a near miracle that he has 6 spades at this vulnerability.

edited obvious typo

This post has been edited by gwnn: 2011-March-31, 03:51

[inquiry]

With AQ of spades, Club King, and four hearts to the Queen, East would not have bid 4♠ as he is not terribly afraid of us bidding 4♥ (could he have expected we would find FIVE of a minor AND have a chance to make?). I guess I would go with against the 2:1 odds that East has the heart queen and play WEST to have it. This probably wrong, however, as it seems seldom that I correctly guess my opponents logic correctly.

[han]

gwnn, on 2011-March-30, 08:16, said:

It's already a near miracle that he has 6 spades at this vulnerability.

Not in the Netherlands, where most people play multi combined with muiderberg. People who allow multi on a 5-card suit explicitly mention this and it is fairly uncommon.

My partner went with the heart length and was down. He asked me afterwards if I saw a good reason to finesse the other way. I said that perhaps the 3H..4S bidder would have bid 4H immediately with AQxx Qxxx.

I agree with gwnn that it is always tough to guess why the opponents bid as they do. But one can't deny that bidding 3H followed by 4S is quite reasonable with AQxx xxxx in the majors, while with AQxx Qxxx many would immediately bid to the 4-level, especially white against red.

[JLOGIC]

Hmm.

Might it not be true that with AQ Q K he has enough points to think 3H might buy it, but then when 3S gets doubled he knows he won't buy if for 3S obv so he just bids 4S (even if doubled it's often down 1, tough to sell out to 4m then).

However with AQ K you are more likely to have something so he might bid 4 to begin with with no HQ?

Or he might be worried that if partner has hearts you might be about to play spades and his spades are strong, in which case he might just bid 3H with both xxxx or Qxxx and then raise to 4S.

I don't know, but I generally think the queen will not make enough of a difference in the auction to overcome 2:1 pot odds. Perhaps I don't have your confidence level in this spot because I have never seen it occur (LOL AMERICA), but I just go with the length here.

Ofc some jedi magic with the heart spots will often be possible (most likely being, LHO plays the highest spot, and then RHO plays the highest spot, I will snap drop the queen in that spot) but that's another story. It is related though because it eliminates some combos where dropping the Q is right, making the finesse more likely to be right in the other spot.

[han]

Yeah I don't know either, certainly didn't blame my partner for going down (in fact, I wasn't too happy with my bidding on this hand, so I wasn't in the position to do any blaming). As you know, R. Clee was in Amsterdam at the time for the White House Juniors. I asked him and he went with the heart length. However, M. Wortel immediately said that the 3H bidder must have xxxx of hearts, and as you also know, she's the nuts. So I don't know what's right, interesting play problem.

[JLOGIC]

When you posted this as a problem without thinking about it I immediately knew it was Qx of hearts also!