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Solid game


MickyB

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The line chosen by my partner at the table was

 

Ace of spades

Ace of diamonds

Diamond ruff

Spade ruff

Diamond ruff

Spade ruff

Queen of hearts

 

He might have chosen a different line if something else had happened on the second round of spades (no-one shows out, but it looks likely that the spade length is on your left)

I believe closer inspection reveals that taking an early club finesse is a red herring.

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The line chosen by my partner at the table was

 

Ace of spades

Ace of diamonds

Diamond ruff

Spade ruff

Diamond ruff

Spade ruff

Queen of hearts

 

He might have chosen a different line if something else had happened on the second round of spades (no-one shows out, but it looks likely that the spade length is on your left)

I believe closer inspection reveals that taking an early club finesse is a red herring.

As the opener says you are in a solid game and the immediate cross ruff springs to mind and looks obvious at first.

You are automatically down when hearts are 4-0 and the king of clubs offside.

I could agree with the above if this were all there is, what argues against the cross-ruff line.

However, closer inspection reveals there are other, less obvious but more likely distributions, where the cross-ruff line does not work like

[hv=pc=n&s=s4hqj86543da82ct9&w=st6ht7dkj7653c832&n=saj532hk2d4caqj65&e=skq987ha9dqt9ck74]399|300[/hv]

West over-ruffs the third spade and switches to clubs.

Trump promotion plays are easy to overlook and the main threat to the cross ruff line. This type of declarer problems are fiendishly difficult to analyze.

The club finesse has attraction, because West is very unlikely to hold a singleton club after the opening lead.

I readily admit that I do not know what is best, but you have done nothing to prove your claim that the club finesse is a red herring though your claim probably indicates that your line did work on the actual layout while others went down.

 

Rainer Herrmann

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I wondered why I didn't recognise the hand, but having trawled through the hand records I see that we bid to 5x the other way, so no-one faced this play problem at our table. 5x is OK if 4 makes, less so if it doesn't, so I hope most people manage to find a line to make 4....
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He might have chosen a different line if something else had happened on the second round of spades (no-one shows out, but it looks likely that the spade length is on your left)

 

I already said that you might choose to change your line if you think there is spade shortage on your left. What happens on the first couple of rounds of spades may help you here.

 

As the opener says you are in a solid game and the immediate cross ruff springs to mind and looks obvious at first. You are automatically down when hearts are 4-0 and the king of clubs offside.

 

No you aren't

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I readily admit that I do not know what is best, but you have done nothing to prove your claim that the club finesse is a red herring though your claim probably indicates that your line did work on the actual layout while others went down.

 

Rainer Herrmann

 

I said an early club finesse is a red herring. You should decide what is going on in spades first. You may not need the club finesse and taking it has some risks.

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