greiman

Wow, these topics move faster than I expected. As some of you have surmised, this hand was played during a Robot Rewards Tourney, which doesn't have accessible hand records afterwards. After the round, I pulled up the movie for the hand, and emailed a friend of mine bemoaning my poor luck. A day or two later, I decided to post here with the scant details that I had left from that email (since the movie was no longer available). I'm aware that GIB isn't a world class player and will occasionally drop a trick here and there. But this seemed like an egregious error with nothing to gain and everything to loses, so it felt worth reporting. Apparently there's a fancy way to do that now. I'll do that in the future.

This was during one of the Robot Reward Tourneys, so unfortunately, I don't have the complete hand record. GIB and I had a quick auction to ourselves landing in 6NT, and after a small diamond lead this is what GIB sees: AQJ862, J, AT6, AK4 K7, AQ942, K92, J75 The initial diamond lead went around to east's DJ which GIB wins. The obvious line seems to be a club to the ace followed by a heart finesse. Assuming the spades come in, that's 12 tricks if it wins, and 12 tricks when it loses. Granted, there might be value in cashing a spade first to see if we need both red finesses (or a doubleton club) if we only have 5 spade tricks. But GIB didn't do that either. The play went something like this: 1. Small diamond to the jack and king. 2. Small diamond to the ace (!). 3-8. Lots of spades. 9. Heart finesse losing. 10. DQ cashed. 11. I don't remember and didn't check. Sorry for the lack of specifics, but I didn't know there was a way to report a bug directly from the hand record.

You're right, leaving the ace as an entry handles this "in trouble" hands better since it can handle a less favorable diamond layout. But it has twice as many of these "in trouble" hands and it fails more often.

I took a closer look, but I remain unconvinced. I'm going to ignore the 4-0 splits because both lines are in trouble. Looking at the hand combinations for west, there's spade count (1, 2, or 3), heart count (2 or 4 (a 3-3 split works for both lines)), and SK (yes or no) for 12 different combinations. (Obviously, not all the same probabilities). Cashing the ace before hearts makes on 8 hands, goes down on 2, and gets complicated (usually depending on diamonds on 2). Cashing hearts first makes on 5, goes down on 3, and gets complicated on 4. Both lines go down if West is 22 w/o the SK. SA 1st goes down if West is 32 w/ the SK Hearts 1st goes down when West is 32 wo SK (finesse fails after he ruffs) 12 wo SK (finesse fails after he ruffs) That would seem to favor cashing the ace first. What am I missing?

When first looking at the hand, I was thinking of cashing the SA before playing three rounds of hearts. Compared to Cyberyeti's line, it gains if East is 22 in the majors with the SK. Even if they don't have the king, we might survive if West was 2443. Also gains if anybody has a stiff king since now we know we can afford to draw trump (5 spades, 4 hearts, 2 diamonds, 1 club, and diamond ruff for 12 tricks). This feels like about 75-80%. Of course, the other advantage to Cyberyeti's line is that if hearts are 3-3, now we can try for 13 tricks. At least we've established that they're both better than taking a diamond finesse.

Those who mentioned slam must've missed the "invitational" description for LHO's bid. There's only way partner's got AJxxxx, -, Axxxx, xx is if our opps have forgotten their agreements. I prefer not to assume that. 4S on the other hand, should be great. I'm not worried about the opponents bidding on to 5H. RHO had a chance to act over 3S and didn't. LHO was content to play in 3H originally, so he'll pass over 4S. Unless there was a really long pause after 3S, but I know how to handle that situation.

I'm a little late joining the party, but I'll cast my vote too. Assorted thoughts: Partner's spade cards are well placed. Partner's diamond cards are poorly placed. If partner has a heart honor, that means my ruff isn't helpful. In order to all of a sudden jump to game, declarer should have a 4 loser hand without 6 hearts. My hand is awful, so partner should have some cards (or we've got no chance of setting this) There's no point in trying to stop diamonds ruffs. Given our 3 small, they're unlikely to need more than one ruff anyway. The worst hand I could give partner that let's us set this includes the CA and a major ace. And hope that declarer has x,AKQxx,AKxxx,xx. I get my spade ruff, and then we cash our two clubs. I could also give partner the aforementioned CA and another random KQ somewhere that declarer can't avoid. We take the first two tricks, and wait for our slow ones. If partner doesn't have the CA, we'd have to take two spade tricks, a heart tricks, and something else in the wash. I'm not familiar with the rating system here, but I'll go with something like this: ST: 10 CQ: 7 Others: 1 And now you'll tell me that dummy had AK of spades and declarer pitched his losing clubs on the first two tricks.