sathyab

If partner is leading from a holding of 75 in spades declarer will have KQ86, not KQ986 as the 9 is in the dummy.

Yes it's entrirely possible that partner has led the 7 from H87 of spades. But here's another consideration: what'd he lead without the double ? A lead from AQxx was beating 3nt without the double. On a lead of a low heart Axxx, 3nt was going down if declarer had to lose the lead twice in clubs. So by doubling you have put yousrself in a position where you're forced to guess right at trick two without much of a clue. I understand that if partner holds H87 of spades it caters to a lot more hands than the holding of KQxx or Aqx[x] of hearts with 7x of spades. But I like the heart switch as it beats the hand when partner has AQx of hearts and KQxx as well. Holding AQx he wouldn't lead a heart, opting for a passive minor suit lead. From KQxx of hearts he may have led a heart diminishing our chances greatly if not ruining them completely. And you break even when partner would have led a heart from AQxx without the double.

A low heart hoping that partner has HQx[x] of hearts and continues hearts if declarer plays low. If declarer's heart holding is stronger such as Axx of hearts and he ducks, partner will probably continue the suit anyway hoping you had Hxxx of hearts. But I don't see any other chances.

Late to the party here. But you suspect that the 2nt bidder has lots of clubs, so you can double 2nt first planning to bid 4c over the expected 3c bid, can't you ? Most likely partner will sign-off in 4s, now 5c has to be exclusion. All this only only if I think LHO is capable of psyching a 1nt bid, otherwise I'll settle for 6s hoping that partner wasn't doing something silly like bidding 2s with J8xxx and a King outside at favorable vulnerability (I've seen enough players, including the so-called good ones doing it in serious games, so please don't laugh). He'll then tell you that you should have expected the heart finesse to be off, so it'll be your fault then.

Clubs appeared to 6-2, with the Q being a true card, yes playing the Q from QT9xxx would be a very good play causing you to misjudge the hand. My plan was to end-play RHO whenever he has Qxx of hearts and the King of spades. But at the table I thought if I tried to ruff a club, RHO may a discard a Diamond from xx or xxx and cause problems. You will play one round of trumps and switch to Diamonds. If RHO happens to have a doubleton Diamond LHO takes the Ace gives his partner a ruff. Now even if the ruff came at the expense of a natural trump it has destroyed your end-play for RHO exits with his third trump. Not that I thought of all this then, but I played a Diamond to the King hoping it'd be hard for my LHO to hold-off (later that evening when were consuming alcohol, someone pointed out that playing the Q is better as it's harder to duck it, as partner may have the King). If he does hold off, I would have to pull one round of trumps, and then judge how to continue. If Diamonds appear to be 4-3 with LHO holding the Ace I can pull one more trump hoping that LHO shows out and then play Diamonds. He will of course take the appropriate Diamond honor to deny entry to dummy although it doesn't matter now if clubs are 6-2, as I can play a trump and end-play RHO. LHO won the Diamond and played back another which I won in hand. Now I pulled trumps and was disappointed to see them splitting 2-2. RHO had KT9xx Qx 9xxx Qx. When you can't even get a 3-1 break in trumps life really sucks.

Sorry, I should have said "LHO leads the Ace of Clubs and continues with the deuce at T2".

[hv=d=s&v=b&n=sq64hj842dj73ck84&s=saj2hakt63dkqtcj5]133|200|Scoring: XIMP[/hv] When people discuss IMPs it's more about bidding than dummy play or defense, but every once in a while you do come across a few interesting play problems. This shouldn't be hard at all really, especially when stated as a problem, but quite a few decent players I showed it to at the regional last weekend didn't get it right. The bidding was 1h-3c-4h, with opponents remaining silent. 3c was a Bergen raise showing a constructive raise with 4 trumps. LHO leads the Ace, RHO follows suit with the 7. LHO continues with the 2 of clubs and you put up the King and your judgement is rewarded when RHO plays the Queen. What's your plan ?

Given that you have two high spades for sure, you can beat this hand any time partner has Ace of clubs and holds four of fewer clubs by forcing dummy once. I'd encourage, as a spade ruff and high club could be our other two tricks. But my worry is that if pd has four spades he might shift to a Diamond playing me for Diamond King rather than the trump holding that I have. I wouldn't want a trump shift either if I can gurantee a trick by forcing dummy just once.

Partner needs the Ace of hearts for his opening and either KJ of Diamonds or a high club honor lacking any Diamond honors. I'd rule out a strong holding in Diamonds such as KQT or better as he'd have led that in preference to K from Kx of spades. Shifting to a Diamond is the winning defense when partner has a natural trump trump trick such as Txx or an honor and a potential Diamond trick but with a holding that he can't attack Diamonds himself, which essentially means partner has KJ of Diamonds and Txx of clubs, he can't have KJ of Diamonds and a club honor if the 2c bidder has his bid. On a spade continuation declarer can pitch only one of his red suit losers; but if partner's Diamond holding is strong enough to lead it himself after getting a spade ruff we can beat the contract with 2 spades, 1 heart, 1 diamond and one trump trick. On this lay-out a Diamond continuation lets the declarer make it. So I'm playing declarer for Qx xx JTx AKxxxx. Spade continuation also caters for hands where declarer has only a 5-bagger in clubs and a stronger diamond holding, as we now get 2 spades, 1 heart and two trump tricks. I'm going with door #2.

You got fixed by the bidding. File it away. Hey he did warn you that they were playing Acol :)

Interesting, thanks. Intuitively that felt right (thats why I shifted to a club when theres a possible extra hand type where a heart is right) but I had no idea what the math was. ??? uhh.. AKJTxxxx x xx xx would be a protypical hand type. There are many of these. I would also like to note that it's not like every 7321 hand is an auto lose if you don't shift to a heart. It would require specific hand types. You're right. I was unduly influenced by the stiff King of hearts. With eight spades to the AKJT, declarer doesn't need the King of hearts to make the hand with a heart shift. I overlooked the fact he can simply ruff, pull two rounds of trumps and establish a Diamond for his club loser. Playing Obvious Shift doesn't help here on hands where declarer has a stiff heart, as partner would encourage a switch to the obvious shift suit, hearts with KXX as well Kx. It does better than standard methods when partner holds Jxx or Jx, but I find that almost incidental on this hand. The crux of the problem is that you must shift to the side suit where declarer has a possible loser before he can establish a Diamond trick and that seems pretty nearly impossible to do without guessing right. Agreed, that ff declarer does have a stiff, it's more likely in hearts than clubs, but I don't find it compelling enough to give up on hands where declarer has two little hearts.

I tried the exercise of giving declarer a heart holding other than the stiff King and see if a heart switch fares worse than a club switch. I couldn't come up with any scenarios. So I'd switch to a heart and be okay with the result. If you did switch to a heart at the table and were wrong, my sympathies and hope you were not playing with a result-merchant.

I was watching this hand at Garozzo's table as it was being played and remembered thinking that this was really a problem for the defenders to take all the tricks they're entitled to; there's almost nothing the declarer can do stop them. Asuuming that it's reasonable to cover the QofH, defense is in charge. At T2 a Diamond was led at both tables. Now if LHO wins and advances the Queen of Clubs, it doesn't really matter whether you cover or not. They get their club ruff with the second Diamond honor of LHO as the entry and it's 1100 shortly thereafter when the smoke clears. I wish they found that defense, don't you love it when you go for 1100 and your teammates tell you it's a tie !

Partner doesn't have to have more than KJxxx of spades to bid 2s. He didn't bid 2s over 1d, he didn't bid 2h over 2c at his second turn (which again need not show extras just shape and trying to find the best fit). So I wouldn't at all be surprised if pd has KJxxx xxx Jxx xx. They could wrap up this one up easily in that case and of course 3s doesn't rate to make at all. If partner has a slightly better hand for defense, say JTxxx Axx Qxx xx, he might not double 3c when it gets back to him for fear that you might have stretched to compete yourself. It appears that you got them to a level where you can beat them easily if they have overbid, but not know if your aggressive competing got them higher in the first place.

Thanks for the responses. It's allayed many of the concerns that I had when I first read the book almost ten years ago. A couple of questions: 1) I always thought that when partner led A from AK and dummy put down Qxx or longer in the suit, it was a count situation in a suit contract. But there were some hands in the book that treated even this as an attitude/suit preference situation. 2) Against a suit contract, the primary criterion for defining a weak suit is a three-card holding with one honor, even if there's another suit with four little.

Does anyone have serious experience playing Obvious Shift signals ? A recent thread on the topic revived my interest and upon reading the examples in the book, "Switch in Time", chosen no doubt to highlight the benefits of the method rather than the problems it creates, I found a lot of hands where you would make a play that'd make it really hard if not impossible for partner to read at T1, say the 6 from 762, playing standard signals. Playing the deuce would discourage the suit led and tolerance for switch to the obvious shift suit and playing the seven is encouraging. So when you want neither and you have decided that continuing the suit is the lesser of the two evils, you play the 6 and partner usually continues the suit and then realizes what you intended when you play the 7 at T2 and of course in the example hands, no damage happens or more damage would have happened if he had not continued the suit. How playable is this structure ?

The problem with hands like this is that we tend to be influenced by results that occured as a result of an action on a given lay-out, not because the action was the percentage call or not, but that it worked or didn't work on the given occasion. Are there any simulators out there that're sophisticated enough to analyze most likley results of a raise or pass ? I tried doing some search for simulators a while ago but there didn't appear to be much non-sales kind of information.

If you choose a middle spade trying to talk declarer out of a possible finesse, it shouldn't work against a decent declarer if he thinks you're a decent player. It'd be unlikely that you're leading from nothing in spades when it can completely destroy any useful holding partner may have.

When I first read it I thought the question was really for the other side. If someone were to bid 5s, should a pass over that be forcing ? I'd say for sure B)

I don't think he knew he had four diamond tricks available, so he's trying to set up a club trick. I believe that he was agonizing over whether he should play a club to the King and try for 4 diamonds which can cause immediate death if he was wrong or avoid the losing play and hope the defenders make a mistake somehow.

Play to-date and partner's discarding suggests that partner has nothing in diamonds. I doubt if he's playing game with diamond discards. The reason declarer tanked so long before playing the club Ten was he was wondering if it was possible that your pd had QJ of clubs and didn't split honors. And it's entirely possible that he could have had that holding and not split honors, for that coud be the one way of handing the contract to the declarer who other might not have thought of double-finessing in clubs. If all these assumptions are right, you will play a club back to your partner's Ace, not his KING, because declarer would not need so much time to simply duck a club holding ATxx or ATxxx in that suit. If you don't shift to a club, declarer has 4s, 1h and 4d.

There's a convention attributed to Gittelman(?) that lets you bid 5-4, 5-5 major suit combinations of invitational and non-invitational strength directly over 1m. 1m-2h in the non-invitational variety with 5 spades and 4+ hearts, 5-9 HCP and 1m-2S is exactly 5-4 in Spades, Hearts and 9-11 HCP. The continuations are somewhat similar to those over good-bad 2NT. I don't happen to have a link handy for it, but I'm sure you can google it pretty easily.

Results: Obviously I am not a good player but I will tell you what happened. I played AK of spades and later played LHO for the DQ in order to try and tie the board if they hooked at the other table. 10 tricks. At the other table they opened a strong club and got intervention from a bad hand on their right showing the reds so obviously they finessed the spade. Fredrik Nystrom played identically to me. Marty Fleisher took 2 finesses. My partner said he agreed with my line. Even if you can figure out which line of play offers a better chance for 11 tricks and which one for 12 tricks, to reject the line that offers 12 tricks in favor the 11 trick lineyou must have a strong reason. So far I haven't seen any compelling argument that says the 11 trick line was more likely than the 12 trick line. Sorry if you thought I was implying that you were not a good player, I certainly didn't intend to. No matter how good a player one is, the Fall Nationals is a veritable collection of who-is-who in the world of bridge. When my partner and I found ourselves sixteenth in the qualifying list for the Blue Ribbon Pairs finals, I was telling a director from the Bay Area that our names were the only ones that I couldn't recognize in that illustrious list :) It was in that vein that I used the phrase "good players". My apologies again if it came across differently.

In the 1.5 or two minutes that you have available to play to trick 1, you were able to figure out that playing the AK of spades increases your chances of making 11 tricks but reduces the chances of making 12 tricks ? Really ? It's far from clear even with all your analysis why or how much one line is superior to the other. Numbers like 47% for one line and 44% for the other don't pop up at the table for most of us and even if they did that could hardly be the basis for doing some unorthodox like rejecting a routine finesse in trumps. It'd be nice if we had play records available so we could at least see how the good players, of whom there'd be so many in a BAM event, played it even if we wouldn't know why they did what they did.

If spades are 3-2 you will eventually have to play a diamond to the King yourself. If trumps are 4-1 either way, you will need an entry back to your hand outside of clubs to play a Diamond toward dummy. So I'll take the first heart in dummy with the K, AofS, a club to my hand and spade finesse.