Another lead against slam

[vuroth]

Don't just tell him responder's hand ! We're not as defenders entitled to know what responder actually has; only what their agreements are.

I assumed the asterisks were opponents explanations. Not much else makes sense, really.

 

If the agreement seems weird, well, I don't think that an example from a Sharif book is likely to come from this century.

 

There's probably a good lesson in this, though. Even if opponent's explanation of their system seems odd, believe it. If it turns out that their agreement was singleton or void, call the director. If it turns out LHO bid it with a void despite the agreement, shrug it off.

 

V

[vuroth]

The king of clubs is a lead that every beginner should find.

Either you're using a definition of beginner that I'm unfamiliar with, or I need to quit this game and find something easier to master.

[cherdano]

The king of clubs is a lead that every beginner should find.

Either you're using a definition of beginner that I'm unfamiliar with, or I need to quit this game and find something easier to master.

Instead, I suggest you try to improve at guessing when Justin is being sarcastic.

[vuroth]

Instead, I suggest you try to improve at guessing when Justin is being sarcastic.

Could be. In all honesty, I find the internet to be simply an awful medium for sarcasm. With no tone of voice to back it up, it becomes very hard to tell when someone is being sarcastic and when they're just off their rocker.

 

Thanks for pointing out the possible interpretation I was overlooking, though.

 

V

[cherdano]

Btw, I am not even convinced the ♣K lead is right. If we lead ♣K and don't hit partner's void, then this is only helpful in 1/3 of the cases (when his presumed ace is in clubs). It also assumes that opener has a club singleton or has Blackwooded with two fast club losers. If we lead a diamond and don't hit partner's void, is the chance we score ♣K later really worse than that?

[ralph23]

If we lead ♣K and don't hit partner's void, then this is only helpful in 1/3 of the cases (when his presumed ace is in clubs).

If we lead the club and don't hit the void by doing that, then partner's Ace is either the heart ace or the club ace. Ex hypothesi, he has a void in diamonds here. So it is helpful in one case out of two.

 

There are four cases to consider:

 

1. Club void and diamond Ace.

2. Club void and heart Ace.

3. Diamond void and club Ace.

4. Diamond void and heart Ace.

 

THe King of Clubs gets the money on 1,2 and 3.

 

It could be the only lead to give away the contract on 4, of course, as declarer may have started with AQJ in clubs, for instance, and had a club and heart loser all day... until the opening lead !!

 

But we win in 3 possibilities out of 4.

 

Leading a low minor card is 50-50: either we hit the void, or we don't. Leading the King raises this closer to 75-25, {NB - although it won't come quite to that b/c we know declarer and partner share 8 hearts, but the other 3 players share both 9♣ and 9♦. So partner's "average" heart holding is 4 but his average minor holding is 3. I haven't thought how the bidding and other info may affect this, am just calculating it a priori.}

 

 

If we lead a low club and miss the void (which will therefore be in diamonds), lots of bad things can happen:

 

a. Dummy has the Ace of clubs and declarer has a stiff club. (or less likely, vice versa).

b. Declarer has Ax of clubs and can rid of his small one on an extra winner in dummy.

 

I'm not mathematician enough to calculate the relative odds of low club versus King of clubs, by any stretch of my wild imagination, but impressionistically King seems imho a better gamble.

Edited August 11, 2007 by ralph23