A hand from the jcreech session

[kenberg]

Jim presented a number of hands yesterday, I played three of them. He said he took some or all of the hands from play where there was a swing, so there would be choices to be made. This seems like a good idea.

I'll give you one of my hands and say a bit about where I was uncertain. I unfortunately did not same the hands so I have to go with my memory. And if I am a little off, still the hand is interesting.


Shape: 6=3=0=4, decent values.

QJxxxx
AQx
void
AKxx   but maybe it was AKTx, I'm not sure.


I deal and open 1 , partner bids 2 , opponents pass throughout.

I suppose I could splinter but I like to have four card support for that. Anyway, I bid 3   Partner bids 4 .

Hmm. I'm not sure I like this.

1   2
3   4

We will be playing in some number of hearts, but how many and how do we decide.  On my end I see two or maybe three problems. The 4 cue is opposite my void, so we have some duplication. So the hands are good, but not great together. Also, the opponents might well be able to cash two spades.  And, finally, I know I have the A and Q but partner doesn't.

I do not think it is clear just how to handle all of this.

I decided to bid 5 .  So I did not bid 4 , presumably a cue, and I did not bid 4NT rkc, but I did cue clubs, so pard might well see that I am worried about spades. I figured if he now to bid 5 I would take the bull by the horns and bid 6 . He bid 5 and I passed.

Was this ok? Actually, maybe so. As I recall, Gib says 6 makes, but Gib gets to look at all the hands. So I am not sure we should be in 6, and if we should be in 6 I am not so sure what the best route is.

So now I will give you both hands.Again I am not exactly sure. Partner had a 0=5=5=3 shape, I believe the hearts were KJxx and I believe the clubs were Jxx. Let's go with that.

QJxxxx
AQx
Void
AKxx


  Void
KJxxx
AKQxx
Jxx

That J is starting to look very important. One route to 12 tricks is via two ruffs in dummy, after which you draw trump using the A and the KJ. Hope the hearts are 3-2. Even then it could go wrong on the lead of, say, the !ST. TJK ruff. Now what? You can ruff one diamond but if you ruff back to hand you are down to three trump. If you ruff another diamond, cash the high trump and ruff back to hand you have lost control. You  have one high trump left but the opponents have three trump.

If dummy (my hand) has AKTx of clubs that gives another option. Now we have three clubs even if the finesse loses, so one diamond ruff probably suffices. There could be some transportation issues.

So: A void opposite a strong suit is often a problem, as I think it is here, both in the bidding and the play. As mentioned, I think Gib could see 12 tricks. By peeking.

Anyway, I found this to be an interesting hand. I think Jim's idea of presenting hands where, at the original table, reasonable people made varying choices is a good one. I was uncertain of the best choice so I have no problem with someone who would choose differently.


  Added: Another way to phrase this:

With

QJxxxx
AQx
Void
AKTx


  Void
KJxxx
AKQxx
Jxx
I surely want to be in slam.

With

QJxxxx
AQx
Void
AKxx


  Void
Kxxxx
AKQxx
Jxx

I think I don't want to be in slam. Tough to sort these two out in the bidding.

[jcreech]

Dlr: East
Vul: E-W
          North
            AK8
            7
            T98654
            QT7

West                    East
                          QJ9432
  KT862               AQ3
  AKQ72             
  J93                   AK64

          South
            T765
            J954
            J3
            852


Auction:
East    South    West      North         
 1        P        2          P
 3        P        4          P
 5        P        5          P
 5        P        6          P
  P          P

At the table, this was the auction.  I ruffed the first trick, hoping to find the hearts  and diamonds breaking and thinking that by ruffing  early and if the hand with the shorter hearts had a longer diamond, it might be an easy pitch.  Two rounds of hearts had me realizing that I might be scrambling for down one.

Hoki said that I should have let the first trick run to my hand, and pull two rounds of trump to see if they break.  When they do not, finish pulling trump and hope that there is a three suit squeeze on North.  It looks like there is.  The diagram below shows the hand with North yet to pitch on the fourth heart.  There have been two pitches so far – a spade and a diamond. 

          North
            AK
           
            9865
            QT7

West                    East
                          QJ94
  8                     
  KQ72               
  J93                   AK64

          South
            T765
           
            J
            852

If a diamond is pitched, then play three rounds of diamonds, putting North in.  North has to exit.  (a) If a club, you have no choice but to let it run to the jack, then you have the rest of the tricks.  (b) If a spade, ruff, cash the diamond, and North is squeezed again.

If a spade is pitched, cross to dummy with a club, ruff a spade, and take top tricks.

If a club is pitched, then it seems like North can counter any continuation.  Since GIB says that 6 is makeable, then it is more difficult than I can solve so far.  However, I would find pitching a club far more difficult than the other options.

[kenberg]

I'll give this some thought later. It seems tricky. Some general principle remarks:

If we don't ruff a D we have only ten top tricks in ,  and so we need two more.

Three suit squeezes sometimes produce two tricks but transportation issues often arise. Perhaps the fifth trump is useful in this.

With ten tricks needing two, often rectification is needed but, if so,  what do we duck and when?

If we assume declarer is good enough to visualize a three suit squeeze, perhaps double dummy,  we should also assume N is good enough to pitch one , one ans one   as trumps are being drawn.

So what to do? Good question!

A fun hand.

Gotta go now, but I look forward to thinking about this.

[kenberg]

Ok, with (more than a little) help from my friend Gib I see how to do this, at least on the diamond lead. Toss a club from the board, win the diamond in hand. Play two more top diamond tossing another club and a spade from the board as S ruffs in.

It's easiest for declarer if S now leads a spade, but he can handle anything. He goes to work ruffing spades in hand, using clubs as entries.

It seems to work.

It's double dummy, to put it mildly.

As noted, I really like this hand. I think E could go a little slow after the splinter, but still the hand has chances. Even with the bad split in the slam can be made, although not likely it would be. As for N defending the three suit squeeze by pitching a after pitching a and a , I am sure he wouldn't like it but he doesn't like his other choices either. It could be interesting to see what a Gib would do.  I might try them at it.

Added: To see how tight this all is, suppose that after ruffing the third S returns a small trump. Declarer has so far won two tricks, he needs 10 more. He has two club tricks available, after the trump return he has at most seven trump tricks so he needs a spade. He wins the trump trick on the board. The hand are now:


Dlr: East
Vul: E-W
          North
            AK8
           
            T98
            QT7

West                    East
                          QJ943
  KT86                Q3
  72                   
  J93                   AK

          South
            T765
            J9
           
            852

 

           
T5: from board, ruffed  low
T6: to board 
T7: from board, ruffed  low
T8: to board
T9: from board, ruffed  low
T10: ,  ruffed low on the  board

So:

 North
           
           
            T98
           

West                    East
                          QJ
  K                      Q
  72                   
                         

          South
            T
            J9
           
           

Cash the spade, cross-ruff the last two tricks.

This requires the hands to have the exact shape that they have. It seems unlikely anyone would actually play it this way, it's hard enough to see it double dummy.  Gib is very clever, but he does get to peek.
 

[jcreech]

Wow! Ken.

Thank you for putting in this work.  This hand has been haunting me for a couple of weeks, but the one thing I never thought of was getting East to ruff with its natural trump trick as an early part of the solution. 

[kenberg]

Yes, and who would. As mentioned, I had some help from Gib. After some thinking that got me nowhere, I tried a few things with the robots. One of them, although I could not see why, was to let the run to hand and then cash the second high . After that I asked Gib for advice, he suggested a third .  Who am I to argue with a robot, so I played the third , ruffed. So now what? Well, we can ruff out the AK of .

Of course S does not have to take the offered ruff, but if he doesn't it still comes in, with care.

I doubt that, say, Rosenberg or Hamman would find this line. The cards have to be placed just right for it to work and there are better options with a different lie of the cards. For example ruff, the , cash two high hearts in dummy. lead a from the board. If the Q is the the right of declarer, with hearts splitting, we get 0+5+3+3+ 1 ruff=12. And if the J loses to the Q we still have good chances. So I think the ruff followed by the top hearts from dummy is a much better line, except that it fails and this other remote line works.


Gib is useful, but we needn't let him brag about his clever play when he sees all of the hands.