go to game or stop at 3?????

[pes_6]

PASS

[danhputnam]

Using LTC, you get the same 6 loser hand with either 6 hearts and 3 clubs, or with 5-4, assuming you have a fit. But the 6-3 combo is worth a full extra trick since the 6th heart will surely take a trick plus provide extra insurance against a bad split, and another low club is unlikely to create a winner.

 

Also how does South bid his hand if he has the singleton A of spades and the AQx in diamonds? I treat this jump rebid as close to GF. North's Q of hearts plus touching honors in spades makes this an easy 4H contract.

[msjennifer]

As always, the worst possible argument goes to losing trick count. Counting the North hands as "9 losers" makes it look the same as KQxxx xx xxx xxx. Calling it "3 cover cards" makes it look the same as Kxxxx xx Qxx Qxx.

 

North has a very nice KQ holding in his 5-card suit, and the always-great-to-have Q of trumps. It's a 4♥ bid, and I don't even consider it close. (Game is only ok and not great, but South also has a minimum 3♥ bid.)

SIR,personally,I fully agree with you.

[msjennifer]

As always, the worst possible argument goes to losing trick count. Counting the North hands as "9 losers" makes it look the same as KQxxx xx xxx xxx. Calling it "3 cover cards" makes it look the same as Kxxxx xx Qxx Qxx.

 

North has a very nice KQ holding in his 5-card suit, and the always-great-to-have Q of trumps. It's a 4♥ bid, and I don't even consider it close. (Game is only ok and not great, but South also has a minimum 3♥ bid.)

SIR,personally,I fully agree with you.

[lorserker]

I find this kind of quite hard.

 

When thinking about it, I would like to distinguish two cases:

 

case (1) partner has the !SA

case (2) partner does not have !SA

 

in case (1) when p has !SA i expect to make most of the time (maybe 80%), but I think p will have the !SA just about 30% of the time. In the other 70%, case (2), I expect it to be harder to make as we have to build 3 tricks in the minors. Maybe i will be successful about 25% of the time when we miss the !SA

 

So, the total chance of success i estimate 30% x 80% + 70% x 25%, which is just above 40%, indicating that we should pass.

 

All the probabilities above I estimated from intuition. The question is how accurate they are. We can check it by simulation.

 

Simulating, I gave south 16-18 hcp, at least six hearts and no side suit of four or longer; the results.

 

- p is 55% likely to have !SA

- when p has the ace, we are about 60% likely to make

- without the !SA we make around 40% of the time

- our total chance to make 4 is slightly above 50%, so we should bid

 

Important takeaways:

- the initial probabilities i came up with from intuition are very wrong

- i figured p is less likely to have the spade ace because the opps have more spades than p, so they are more likely to hold that card. seems that i didnt consider enough the strength partner showed.

- i overestimated my chances in the happy case (with the spade ace)

- i underestimated my chances when we don't have the spade ace

- it seems better to bid, but the decision is very close.