How do you play
You are in 6♣ after North opens 1♥ and you show diamonds.
The auction at the table was somewhat different (artificial) but very close to the following one in terms of information given
You get a ♠ J lead, which you win in dummy, cross to ♥ K, play a small ♣ , 5 by lho, you put up the ten and RHO follows with 9. You decide it’s a true card, and LHO does infact have KJ7 left.
At the table my partner played a club to ace and another club. This line would work whenever ♥ J falls 3 cards, or ♦ are 2-2
I suggested that perhaps pd should ruff a heart, cash one high diamond and then play ♣ A, ♣ .
This would work whenever ♥ 4-3 or Jack doubleton, or LHO holding singleton ♦ but would fail when LHO has two diamonds and hearts are Jxxxx (lho would win ♣ K, exit ♦ and then ruff the ♦ )
I am not convinced either of these is the best line though. Comments?
SJ lead out of turn? It might make a difference, depending on which hand is exposed, about the return the opponents are likely to make.
But, all told, trying to establish the Hearts with a ruff, and the “flight square” move of cashing D Ace first, is better by a few percent, is my gut feeling — too lazy to compute the actual odds!
Yes, the lazy person’s gut feeling is correct. Assuming, nobody started with an 8 card spades (no noise in auction), west started with 4 clubs, Sandeep’s suggested line is 2-4 % better than the actual line taken (2% if west has spade Q and 4% if east has spade Q) – it is not very clear who has actually led spade J!
However, if we assume a good defending opponent, the actual line is about 10% better because west has an option to go up club king and return a diamond and it takes away all the extra options of setting up hearts when hearts are not breaking and diamond are also not breaking. When an expert defender does not do that, the chances of hearts not behaving decrease as compared to diamonds not behaving.
Can share the computations if anyone interested. But who says defence is easy and experts do not make mistakes
Thanks to Tewari’s calculations I now know that those special sensors of mine don’t need re-calibration!
The description about winning the lead in the dummy suggests that North is the dummy, and West has the SJ. If West was indeed on lead, it raises another interesting question — should he lead his singleton Diamond to protect his KJxx holding in trumps — by making the declarer play trumps in a hurry? Spy vs Spy type of thinking will then mean that he may not have a singleton Diamond.
Not withstanding the complex logic underlying the location of SQ and the consequent adjustment to the percentages, I can understand if Rajesh does not want to redo his calculations to account for the marginal lower likelihood of a stiff Diamond with West!