xcurt

I'd like to go back and interpolate DA, DJ off the table before playing on clubs. Otherwise we're committing to leading a major suit now, given our relative lack of entries to hand.

On the other hand we're defending 1NT, and we have no idea what the trick target is, it could be anything from +2 to -2, so I don't think we can expect to defend perfectly after the opening lead. My instinct was to lead a diamond, because if we lead hearts and it's wrong, or even if it just blows an irrelevant tempo, we're going to be under pressure to pitch double dummy. If I lead a diamond and it's wrong, well, maybe I the third round of diamonds is immaterial or I was going to get squeezed out of it anyway on declarers putative heart winners. So I think we're going to get closer to the double-dummy number of tricks leading a diamond than any other lead.

Yes 3D is forcing everywhere, but I would have bid 4D over 2NT. Partner is not going to cooperate otherwise, not enough diamonds in his hand. I will bite now, 5S, trying to elicit a 6C cue.

Partner is a huge favorite to have the♠A as well, else why the dry ace lead. It looks like we are supposed to cash AK in both majors then tap dummy in spades to ensure the ♣K takes a trick. Is he more likely to do something silly if I encourage or discourage? Declarer might have ♣QJTxxxx, ♥Q, ♦K, in which case partner might think the point of the hand is to build my presumed ♦K before a heart pitch is built. Or declarer might have ♠Qxx, in which case a shift to the ♠A is fatal. I can avoid all this by encouraging, winning T2, and playing ♠K, spade. If the ♥J is now good, all the better, because theres only one possible defense at that point, its too late to try to build a diamond trick.

I thought that was too loose too (IMO so was the -1100 hand). If that's your style you might say "stick with your style," which is true. On the other hand, the winning case for bidding without values -- blasting the opponents out of games -- isn't as likely to come off when the opponents are stuck so much they can no longer win the match by being right when being right means win 5 or so -- they opponents will just bid game because they need to be right at the game level to pick up enough IMPs to win the match.

Also, if you finesse a major and catch Kx on, you don't need the other major finesse.

It would help to know the class of player involved, although my gut reaction is that 3♥ is a sufficiently poor call that it broke the link.

Its likely the defense will start spade, spade tapping the lower diamond off dummy. So AQ isn't much different from AK if we play in diamonds (i voted AJ). Of course AK is better if we play in a round suit, but if that happens we are happy we took a call anyway.

12 card hand...

Partner would have doubled 1NT with a good balanced hand, thus we have at most half the highcard, so the upside of making game when we balance is limited to a few specific cases * partner has 4 hearts, RHO has enough highcard to stay in 1NT despite being shaped, or * partner has 3 hearts and hearts are 2-2, or the above condition, or * partner has something like ♥AT tight, the CA, and two spade honors and in all cases, they can't make their own 20 HCP game in spades. Given all that, I thought the vugraph commentary was way too double dummy on this board.

I was thinking about the same strip line. West can afford a diamond pitch as long as he has a small heart left. You are right that declarer can play off 5 rounds of clubs' then west needs to keep 3040 in the 7 card ending, now i declarer plays 3 rounds of spades, West must unblock. The diamond duck doesnt work because dummy is also squeezed down to 3040 shape. Of course if dummy keeps all the diamonds, west comes down to 2140.

Dummy had to pitch on the hearts. We can squeeze East out of his spade guard, but on the last club dummy has to come down to 3 diamonds or two spades in front of West.

Case A looks unmakeable. If we take the second heart, we can never squeeze West in the pointeds because he discards behind us. If we take the first heart, the count is not rectified, and west can use his extra idle card to retain a link to the heart winners in the East hand.

Case B is pretty easy, run 5 clubs pitching a spade. This forces West to come down to 3 major suit cards, cash the major winners in the right order and play DA and a diamond, ducked, endplaying him. Thinking about Case A now.

This problem is harder than has been made out because usually we are maximizing not our expected score in points, but our expected score in IMPs or matchpoints. There are 4 more bots at the other table, and Condorcet cycles can arise. So unless you constrain the allowed strategies to one decision per table (now its just prisoners dilemma), or specify the other table strategy choices, or restrict yourself to rubber bridge, given the way you specified the problem you will wind up with a Nash equilibrium where the omniscient bots calculate strategies that are probability distributions over the set of choices. These are intesting problems, but they aren't going to get you to any ground truth about overcalling styles, which is how I understood the OPs question. These situations are also easier studied in simpler games like simplified forms of poker.