One way or another...

[Finch]

 

Personally, my approach when defending slams against a competent declarer,where I trust partner to be a good defender and I cannot make a clear signal that cannot cost and may help, is that I almost always play my cards up the line. I just don't give any signal at all.

 

that's really bad. Playing cards strictly up the line is just as poor as giving true count all the time. I hope you didn't really mean it, but rather you just meant you play your spots randomly.

[Fluffy]

playing up the line all the time is not as bad as true count all the time, not remotelly close. But it is far from best.

 

 

On this hand RHO had 2326 with only ♥Q as a honnor.

[JLOGIC]

bink

[JLOGIC]

Not all carding is created equal. Yes, people can lead the CA from AK playing rusinow vs a grand lol, that doesn't take too much imagination. More over, we know almost certainly that LHO has the AK of clubs for his bidding, his best possible relevant hand would otherwise be xx Qx Qxx AJTxxx.

 

Likewise, echos are always more reliable count signals than up the line. It takes effort to falsecard an echo, it does not take effort to just play up the line. It is silly but it is true. Be honest with yourself, how often do you not give count by just playing up the line, vs how often do you falsecard your echo? I bet no one or almost no one does the latter more often or even close.

 

On top of that, RHO played the 9 of diamonds. Since that is the highest one other than the queen we can assume RHO had 9x or Q9x (yeah it's possible with 9xx to play low 9, esp with the 8 as the other one, but again people almost always go up the line there). If RHO has Q9x we know that lefty falsecarded their echo from 3 small. If RHO has 9x, we know that RHO just played up the line with 9x, and lefty gave honest count with Qxxx. If you agree with what I said in the 2nd paragraph of this post, you will know which one it is.

 

Ofc knowing the diamond layout does not mean you have an automatic play either way, but it will make your decision better. It is not inconsistent to think that it's Qxxx of diamonds from their carding just because we know they falsecarded their lead from AK vs a grand, you cannot even make that comparison.

 

It might feel stupid to read the hands this way and exploitable and sad, but once you give in and accept that these obvious patterns exist at all levels and start to believe them and try to see them and figure them out, your hand reading will improve a lot imo.

 

On a similar note, I would take almost no inference from the 6C bid. I do not have enough of a sample against random opps to know what hand types they're likely to bid 6C with. I would not be surprised if any hand with 6 clubs is in the game.

[Free]

On this hand RHO had 2326 with only ♥Q as a honnor.

At least you went only 1 down, where a 2236 would make it 2 off ;)

[ArtK78]

Not all carding is created equal. Yes, people can lead the CA from AK playing rusinow vs a grand lol, that doesn't take too much imagination.

 

Rusinow has nothing to do with it, as most pairs that play Rusinow do not play it against slams.

[ArtK78]

Double post.