JavaBean

Posting as requested.

Hearts are 3-3, and after low to the ♦10, east exits in diamonds. Jack or small? FWIW your line is the same as mine, so far. I don't think I cashed the fourth heart yet, but it shouldn't matter.

In a declarer-play book I've been working through, I found the following. I don't think the suggested line is the best one, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing. [hv=pc=n&s=sa8haq63dj65ca532&n=s42hk84dat42cq764&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1n3sdp3nppp]266|200[/hv] He doesn't mention vulnerability, but it's IMPs so presumably the goal is to make your contract. West leads ♠K.

We opened a spade also; but with our aggressive strong-club style a pass would be out of the question so it's not as useful feedback for you

4-1 clubs doesn't hurt unless diamonds are 7-1.

Whoops, you're right: I counted something twice - it's not 100 for sure. But I doubt 1NT will make often, even when West has ♠AQ, because he will be endplayed often; and the red-suit spots are strong enough that we might conceivably get a second trick in either of those.

I have to agree with Paul - if the bidding script says oppo will bid Michaels, then he has the majors whether he gets a chance to say so or not. If your methods prevent him from showing the majors, and that's information you could have used to find a better contract, then your methods have put you into the wrong contract. At our table my 1♠ opening (lol) got us to 2♠ without a peep from the opponents, which looked great when we saw they had a ten-card heart fit and would likely outbid our diamonds if given the chance. But it seems the reason they didn't get the chance is because West had too many spades to enter the auction - unlucky.

Why is 1NT by West (or North or whoever the opponents were) scoring so badly? They are vulnerable and, at least at our table, North will be leading a club (as the 1D opening doesn't show much in diamonds). That gets us 100 for sure, and with West having very few dummy entries, if any, we seem certain to find another trick somewhere for +200. Even if North leads a diamond 50% of the time, that's still ~33% chance at +200, which should come out well above 2 MPs.

Heck of a call indeed. But at these colors I make it too. Prepared to apologize if partner has clubs.

I double 2♠ so that partner knows he is nuts for not passing 2♦ with this hand. But if I have to call before I see his hand I will raise him, as he must (ha ha) have a shapely hand to bid in front of me. In 2nt, I don't see anything better than winning and then banging down some club honors. If west has no clubs, I guess I will try the spades. The spots really matter here: if dummy has the six or seven (or declarer has the seven) I think the intrafinesse is best, but if not I will have to hope east has ♠Kx(x), and lead up to the queen.

Oh wow, this hand is a lot harder if you misread it and think LHO is the one with two hearts. I had written a lengthy explanation of why wclass was wrong, but now I think I agree with his line. You can cash the second club at trick three to avoid looking silly against Adam Meredith, who has A987 K8 AQJ53 65. On the other hand, then you go down if the ace of diamonds is onside, which still leaves RHO with eleven points so it's not inconceivable. Against a devoted four-card majorite, or someone whom I know to be a joker, I might try my line; but against most players I am with wclass.

It's pretty hard for leading a club to break up a minor-suit squeeze. Dummy has the club threat for sure, and declarer has the diamond threat on the auction (dummy can't easily have four diamonds). So even if you remove dummy's club entry on the lead, declarer will have entries both ways in diamonds, and he can pitch clubs from dummy while he cashes major-suit winners. In the unlikely event that all the diamond winners are in declarer's hand, dummy is likely to have the ace of spades as an entry after cashing hearts. More plausible is a double squeeze around spades, which will be broken up only by a spade lead; presuming on the auction that partner's spades are any good at all, this won't blow a spade trick. If, unlikely as it may seem, partner guards diamonds as well and declarer still has 12 tricks (AKQx opposite stiff, or Axx opposite Kxx with seven heart tricks), declarer has a compound squeeze available and again a spade is the only way to break it up. In real life, though, I lead a lazy heart. Partner's gutsy 7♠ save at these colors suggests he may have some stuff outside spades (how else can he expect to take eight tricks?), in which case they won't have enough tricks unless I blow some suit or other, and the singleton heart is the one card guaranteed never to give away a trick in its own suit. It's the "only one suit will beat it" clue that makes me realize that (a) a spade might be necessary, and (b) think harder about how unlikely it is that a spade will cost a trick. I like your lazy leads better than mine.

Good point. The queen is hard to find, but the ten ought to work just as well against my "improvement" and might not be so hard to find. Hmmm. So if LHO is clever enough to falsecard from Tx, but RHO isn't going to try anything funny with QTx, is it actually better to play low to the jack immediately?

What I actually had in mind was leading up to the jack without cashing the ace first; just as you can't pick up Qxxx onside, you can't pick up Txxx onside either. But low to the jack, followed by a finesse of the nine if East inserts an honor, allows you to pick up either stiff honor with RHO, at the expense of QT tight with RHO, and there aren't any interesting falsecards for them that I can see. That was my thinking, anyway, but I realized later that you also give up QT tight with LHO, since whichever honor he drops under the ace you have no choice but to play for the drop. So cashing the ace first gains on two 3-2 splits and loses to two 4-1 splits. Looks like cashing the ace is still best, but if you have any reason to believe LHO has length in the suit that might be enough to tip the scales. I don't remember what I thought was interesting about being able to ruff in dummy; I guess that's what I get for thinking about card combinations at seven in the morning. Maybe it was just that (until my later re-analysis) the lines for all three scenarios were different that struck my fancy. Edit: It looks like Phil thought that in part C I meant this was the trump suit and you might want to ruff something before playing on the suit. I may have been unclear; I meant that this is a side suit, and if you win the first three tricks you can ruff the fourth.

A94 KJ632 The safety play for four tricks is fairly well known, and fortunately at the table that's all I had to produce. But I started thinking: what's best for five tricks? Or if you can ruff once in dummy? The question looks pretty simple, and maybe the obvious answers are right, but as I pondered it seemed to me that it got sorta complicated and would be worth thinking through even if no "new" knowledge were gained by the bridge community.

A source of confusion on several of the board-result threads was the scoring method. Perhaps 10/10 is a fine scoring method and we only had problems because we're used to CTC, but questions like "how can a contract everyone bids be worth 10?" and "5♣ is barely over 50% to make, why does it score a 10?" can be found all over the forum. (Here I'm ignoring the recent discussion of whether 5♣ is actually more like 40%) Determining matchpoint expectancy can definitely be hard, as evidenced by the Bulletin's "Bidding Box", where Bobby Wolff often assigns scores that seem disastrously wrong to me. But it has a clear definition, making it easier to discuss and debate. "Top ten" scoring makes it very easy to score the best contract (assuming the best contract is clear), but very difficult to discuss other contracts. If 4♠ is worth 10, and 5♠ will fail 20% of the time, should it get an 8? Or should it get a 5 because it's a "terrible" contract to have reached with these cards, where ten tricks is "obviously" the limit? (not quoting anyone here, just emphasizing that these adjectives are subjective) I would very much prefer if subsequent rounds were scored based on expected matchpoints, but I realize that there are advantages to top-ten as well. My feeling is that the majority of competitors agree with me, but rather than simply claim this, I propose a vote. So, vote here to make your voice heard and decide the scoring method of the upcoming round(s).

I voted for AQ, but would greatly have preferred a "whichever makes sense in context" option. That is, I would finesse the queen with both holdings unless writing very formally, like for my debut published bridge book. Then I would probably write "finesse the queen" and "finesse against the queen."

If I'm using them in a meaningful sentence, I usually go with "upside down" and "yellow card". But if I'm reading someone's BBO profile, for example, I pronounce them uhd-kuh and say-see. Although I never use it, I like the more descriptive "say yuck"

Are you so confident on a heart lead? At least one of the major suits will dissolve into a soggy mess.

We play Gazzilli too, but rather than using it for very strong hands, we use it to differentiate between sound openings and "joke" strong-club openings. The hand is not hard to bid properly after starting with 1♣.

Yes, MBodell and I played 3♥X here. Maybe we got peachy's 4♠? Also, we discussed it afterwards and I can't see how 3♥X scores a ten? It will roll home at least some of the time, and even nipping it a trick is only +100 when we have quite a good shot at +130 in either minor. So I guess, like awm, I am volunteering for a demotion. Edit: wrote some rubbish after this, but then realized it was rubbish

Yes, the fact that partner was marked with no hearts (or possibly minus one hearts) made me wary of competing over 4♥: he must be quite weak if he can't act at all with that kind of heart shortness. But I doubled anyway, and it worked out because apparently NS had snuck some of their hearts into his hand.

Not at all. Board 8, for example, makes it clear that we're playing against "expected" NS hands, not the ones they happened to have at the teaching tables. And board 3 is an example of a different sort: we can't even count on oppo to have hands that resemble the auction.

Can 4♠ really be worth 10 out of 12 matchpoints, if over 95% of forum goers bid it? I'd think maybe we get 8, not that it will matter to anyone but helene.

For what it's worth, 4♥ was not doubled by the operator at our table. We obviously aren't running anywhere and wouldn't be happy if we had, but it's a bit odd to not be offered the chance.