Play 012 A grand slam in spades

[inquiry]

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This is one of the hands I give students after we move off the notrump play concepts to playing in suit contracts. This comes after a couple of other hands with the same theme. This one is sort of "tricky" compared to the simpler early versions of the correct play I would have given them. On the first round of trumps, East shows out. You can click the next button twice to see the first two tricks.

 

On a color scale of 1 to 10 for difficult, I rate this one a 2 or perhaps a 3. it is clearly harder than play 010.

[/hv]

[helene_t]

like the idea of starting with grand slams. And its a good hand to ilustrate DR. However, again, I would rate it much higher. Maybe it depends how you introduce suit contracts - if they learned to count losers from the hand it takes a lot of fantasy to figure out that they can also be counted from the dummy. Also, the technique of ruffing high to avoid blocking the trunp suit is quite advanced although on this hand it could also be justified by the risk of a diamond overruff

[Cyberyeti]

Why are you cashing Q♠ ? if you cash the 8 there is much less of an unblocking issue.

[Fluffy]

Why are you cashing Q♠ ? if you cash the 8 there is much less of an unblocking issue.

 

If you want to be a perfectionins you should ruff a diamond at trick 2

[Cyberyeti]

If you want to be a perfectionins you should ruff a diamond at trick 2

 

TBF if both follow to the first spade you can claim, so fair enough to cash one and claim a trick earlier the vast majority of the time

[gszes]

I am a bit confused

 

trick 1 win dia ace (breathing a sigh of relief when no ruff for once by rho)

trick 2 ruff a dia with the ace (we need to teach some flair)

trick 3 small trump to the ten discovering bad break

trick 4 ruff last dia with the king

trick 5 cash spade J small from dummy

trick 6 last trump to spade Q

trick 7 pull last trump

trick 8 claim

 

there is never anything like an unblocking issue (aside from having fun using the

trump ace and king to ruff the diamonds) no risk of ruffs or overruffs after trick

one and no guesswork simply noticing you have all of the top trumps all the way

down to the 8. I see no advantage to playing a trump at trick 2 when a dia ruff

immediately is perfectly safe and actually makes the hand easier to plan and play.

 

technically it may be a bit more "correct" to play a small spade to the 8 at trick 3

making sure declarer is watching all of the spots and taking complete advantage of

all of their entries. It is also a good way of making sure they do not make any play

before planning out the entire hand.

[whereagles]

textbook dummy reversal

 

this is a 1/10 for experts, 5/10 for intermediates, 10/10 for beginner

[kenberg]

Easy or hard? Relative terms. My guess is that more than a few players would rely on bringing in the club suit. Some of these players would, afterward, realize they had made an error. Others would not. Just unlucky. Should have played the clubs differently. Whatever.

[FM75]

Ben, I like your problems. Is it possible that you could either edit the titles in such a way that a BBO search finds just these. It can only search for words of length >3, can search by author, and by which topic holds the post.

 

At first glance, this looked like draw trump and ruff the last club, but 10% of the time trump might split 4-0, which would require 3-3 split to pick up the last club - about 36% until you discover the 4-0 trumps at which point it gets less likely. Can't throw a losing club under another winner. What else could I do? Ruff diamond high, return to dummy, ruff diamond high. Ah yes, a dummy reversal. With a surplus of top trump, I don't even need to worry about how diamonds break.

 

I guess that puts me somewhere in the intermediate spectrum.

[inquiry]

Ben, I like your problems. Is it possible that you could either edit the titles in such a way that a BBO search finds just these. It can only search for words of length >3, can search by author, and by which topic holds the post.

 

At first glance, this looked like draw trump and ruff the last club, but 10% of the time trump might split 4-0, which would require 3-3 split to pick up the last club - about 36% until you discover the 4-0 trumps at which point it gets less likely. Can't throw a losing club under another winner. What else could I do? Ruff diamond high, return to dummy, ruff diamond high. Ah yes, a dummy reversal. With a surplus of top trump, I don't even need to worry about how diamonds break.

 

I guess that puts me somewhere in the intermediate spectrum.

 

Try the advance search. To do so, find the search bar on the homepage of the forum. To the right of where you enter the search term is a green magnifying glass search icon you usually press to search. To the right of that is a gray "Gear icon" (looks like a donut with spikes with a period in the middle of the donut hole). Click on that gear icon. A new search page opens. Enter play in the search term field, On the match line, check the title only box, on the author field, enter inquiry, using the radio buttons make sure you have selected forum (don't search members or help files, or calendar). Then press the search button on the bottom of the page. That should do it for you.

[FM75]

Try the advance search. To do so, find the search bar on the homepage of the forum. To the right of where you enter the search term is a green magnifying glass search icon you usually press to search. To the right of that is a gray "Gear icon" (looks like a donut with spikes with a period in the middle of the donut hole). Click on that gear icon. A new search page opens. Enter play in the search term field, On the match line, check the title only box, on the author field, enter inquiry, using the radio buttons make sure you have selected forum (don't search members or help files, or calendar). Then press the search button on the bottom of the page. That should do it for you.

I alluded to that in my request. Thanks for directions, but I was hoping that you could change your posts in such a way as to not get as many other results.