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Topics - OliverC

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31
Sleight of Hand / Cross with yourself?
« on: July 02, 2017, 12:01:45 AM »
Here is an illustrative hand my partner played the other day:


NS Game, Dealer East


North
!S AJ
!H 987652
!D A106
!C Q4


South
!S K10973
!H A
!D 9754
!C J86


Bidding
East    South      West     North
1 !C      1 !S            2 !C         2 !H
3 !C      No            No          3 !S
All Pass


West leads Ace and another Club. East wins the King and switches to the King of Hearts. You play a Diamond to the Ace and ruff a Heart (all follow). You cash the Jack of Clubs, chucking a Diamond from Dummy. Now a Diamond towards the 10. West wins the Queen and plays a 3rd round of Hearts. You ruff East's Queen.


The position is now as follows



North
!S AJ
!H 987
!D -
!C -


South
!S K109
!H -
!D 97
!C -


You've won 5 tricks already, Opps 3, so you need 4 of the last 5 tricks to make your contract. Opps probably could have defeated this out of hand by leading trumps early, but they've given you a chance. How do you play?


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.
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Only chance for 4 tricks is a cross-ruff. You lead a Diamond and West ruffs in front of you. That surely suggests that West has nothing but trumps left and East started with 1345 shape. You ruff with the Jack of Spades, which holds. What now?


At the table my partner ruffed a Heart with the 10 !S. West overruffed and returned a Spade to defeat the contract. The truth is, however, that the contract is icy cold: All you need to do is to ruff HIGH in your hand, ruff your last Diamond with the Ace in Dummy and nothing on earth can now prevent you from making 1 trick with the 109 in your hand, as West started with !S Q8542 and is forced to underruff three times as you make all of your trumps separately.


This theme is repeated on many occasions in different guises, sometimes making your last trump "en passant" when RHO has the boss trump left but you're leading a side-suit from Dummy at trick 12, sometimes, as here, ruffing high to keep the crossruff going and stop a premature lead of the trump suit.


It's a technique and scenario worth keeping an eye open for.


32
Sleight of Hand / To finesse or not?
« on: June 28, 2017, 12:59:18 AM »
Came across a hand which is particularly interesting at Matchpoints, but bears consideration in a Teams Match as well. Partner and I were playing OCP and with no opposition bidding we bid to 4 !S by South. I won't bore you with the bidding, but partner opened 1 !C and my 1 !S response showed a balanced hand. Partner had Spades, however, so I ended up as the Declarer in 4 !S .

North
 !S AK853
 !H K4
 !D QJ1043
 !C A

South
 !S J1072
 !H AQ105
 !D K7
 !C 1084

LHO led the Ace of Diamonds and a second Diamond which ran round to my King. How do you play the hand? Specifically, how should you play the Spade suit?

I'll let you chew on this and give my analysis in a different post...

33
Sleight of Hand / Hand Evaluation!
« on: June 28, 2017, 12:09:40 AM »
Here's an interesting bidding problem from a hand I played the other day. Opps are Vulnerable. You are not. You're West and have picked up

 !S 8
 !H AQ75
 !D AK1086
 !C A53

LHO deals and after two passes, RHO opens 1 !S . Your action? 2 !D - okay I suppose, but I think Double is the standout choice for most people. The bidding proceeds

North     East     South     West
No           No         1 !S         X
2 !S         3 !H       3 !S        4 !H
No           No         4 !S         ??

What do you do? Go for the money and Double your vulnerable Opps or bid one more?

Assessing defensive tricks can be a tricky business at the best of times, but here the bidding really doesn't suggest going for a penalty, even at this vulnerability. You have to trust that Partner has some values for their free bid of 3 !H , and that suggests that  you and Partner has the majority of the points and probably at least a 9-card Heart fit.

Since NS are competing to game level at adverse vulnerability, the likelyhood is that there is a fair amount of "shape" floating around on this hand, so some of your 4 defensive tricks might not actually be tricks. Safer to bid one more. One enterprising West actually bid two more at this point and ended up in 6 !HX. Partner shows up with

 !S 932
 !H KJ1094
 !D Q5
 !C 1086

and was rewarded: South played two top Spades. Declarer ruffed, cashed two rounds of trumps ending in hand and South stupidly let a Diamond go from !D J97xx on the 2nd round of Hearts, even with AK1086 on view in Dummy. Declarer now ruffed their 3rd Spade, crossed back to the Q !D and ran all but one Heart, sheedding losing Clubs from Dummy. Now AK and a 3rd Diamond ruffed established the 5th Diamond and the Ace of Clubs still provided an entry to it. Even if you don't bid the slam, 5 !H is trivially easy.

Who was I? Ahem... Well I was South at a different table. Almost identical sequence except that my LHO overcalled 2 !D rather than Doubling initially. That gave me the clue that East was more likely to have a Doubleton Diamond and my partner a singleton. Moreover, Partner was marked with length in Clubs and it was probably the only place they could have any points apart from maybe the Jack of Spades, and at this vulnerability I thought they'd probably have more than a 1-count. So I was anticipating almost exactly what they actually had. Over my 4 !S , West doubled rather than bidding one more which didn't turn out too well for them when we turned up with

!S J765
!H 862
!D 3
!C QJ974

opposite

!S AKQ104
!H 3
!D J9742
!C K2

and gathered 10 tricks without any problem for a shared to of nearly 13 IMPs.

It just goes to show that the strategy of taking out insurance by bidding one more rather than doubling and risking a double game swing is usually a winning one.

34
Sleight of Hand / Reading the Hand, Counting, Trump Control!
« on: June 19, 2017, 02:37:30 PM »
Reading the hand correctly is not always possible, especially if there has been no opposition bidding. Where there has been a fair amount of opposition bidding, however, there is rarely much excuse for getting the hand completely wrong. Take this hand (NS Vulnerable, Dealer North):

North
 !S AQ7
 !H 9543
 !D AKJ108
 !C 7

South
 !S 5
 !H AQJ62
 !D 7
 !C QJ10653

Bidding
North     East     South     West
1 !D        X          1 !H       1 !S
3 !H        No         No         3 !S
No          No         4 !C       No
4 !H        X           All Pass

West leads the 10 !S

How do you plan the play? What do you think the EW distribution is? (Opps are competent, reliable bidders)
.
.
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There are loads of way to come to 10 or 11 tricks on this hand. East doubled the initial 1 !D Opening, so there are very few points left for West. Similarly, West's Spade bids haven't exactly lit a fire under East, so it's likely the Spades are 6-3 rather than 5-4, which means that East's shape is likely to be 3424 or 3415, which gives West 6052 or 6061 shape. Making this assessment is fundamental to how Declarer should approach this contract. Only the Hearts being 4-0 explains the bidding and everything else follows from that.

If you ask, Opps will tell you they play "strong 10s", which makes it highly likely that the initial lead is from KJ10 or K109. In practice, though, it makes no real difference whether you rise with the Ace or insert the Queen as long as you get the rest of the hand right.

Your plan now should be to lead a small Club. East will win the King or Ace and probably return to a Spade (especially if you went up with the Ace at trick 1) or maybe a Heart otherwise. You are now in complete control, however. You can effectively run the Diamonds, forcing East to ruff in front of you (they turn up with !D Qx) and return to Dummy with Club ruffs. The defence comes only to a Club and a Heart. Effectively you're retaining trump control by using the Diamonds as additional trumps, forcing East to ruff in front of you, thereby creating the scope to take Club ruffs on the way back

If you're not too fussed about overtricks, you can even take a Heart finesse early on, return to Dummy with a top Diamond and take a second finesse before exiting with a Club, and still come to a comfortable 10 tricks.

At the table
Declarer clearly didn't accurately assess the likely EW distribution. They rose with the A !S at trick 1, cashed AK !D and then took a Heart finesse and exited with a top Club. East won and returned a Spade forcing Declarer to ruff in hand, and now a Club ruff and another !H finesse and a Club ruff. Even now, Declarer could have prevailed by leading a top Diamond and discarding a Club whether East ruffs or not because Declarer has already gained 8 tricks (Now East makes 2 Clubs and a Heart, but nothing else), but Declarer overruffed but could only put East back in with a Club, allowing East to draw Declarer's last trump and lead a Spade to Partner's King, a 2-trick difference in the result. Not overruffing leaves Declarer in control because they're now certain to make both of their last trumps.

If you're wondering, I was West on this hand. I was beating myself up as the hand progressed for not bidding 4 !S . Although it looks like Opps can stop me from ruffing Diamonds, in practice East can never get the lead to fire a trump through my hand, because their only entry if to ruff the 2nd round of Diamonds with their singleton trump and East can only deny me 2 Diamond ruffs at the expense of a natural trump trick, so 4 !SX is probably only 2 or 3 off. I was saved by Declarer's misplay at trick 10!

The EW Hands:
West                 East
 !S K109843       !S J62
 !H -                    !H K1087
 !D 95432           !D Q6
 !C 92                 !C AK84

35
Sleight of Hand / Nice easy example!
« on: June 03, 2017, 11:09:39 AM »
Saw this nice hand in the Polish Open trials today, and it's a nice example of (a) counting the hand, and (b) being aware of what's "happening" on the hand. It would be a better hand at Matchpoint scoring, it's true, but Declarer's technique here should be automatic.


You hold


!S KQ5
!H K102
!D AQ86
!C 1097


You and partner bid to 3NT on the following auction:
1NT - (2 !H1) - 3 !S2 - 3NT
(1): Hearts and a Minor
(2): Transfer to Clubs (GF)

LHO leads the 5 !H and Dummy goes down with

!S A7
!H 974
!D J105
!C AQJ63

RHO plays the Q !H at trick 1, taken with your King. You lead the 10 !C at trick 2. LHO plays the King and then shows out on the second round of the suit. Plan the play from here.

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.
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Declarer here showed excellent technique to (a) put some pressure on Opps, and (b) to give him a fairly complete count of the hand. 3 rounds of Spades followed, LHO showing out on the 3rd round, then 3 more rounds of Clubs, RHO playing a Heart on the last Club.

Now you're down to

!H 9
!D J105

opposite

!H 10
!D AQ8

It should be completely automatic here to exit with a Heart and endplay LHO to lead a Diamond back into your AQ tenace after taking their 2 Heart tricks. RHO started with 2 Hearts and LHO has shown up with only 3 cards in the Black suits, and so is marked with exactly 2551 shape. It's only an overtrick, since 10 tricks are assured, and it's a very easy and obvious example of an endplay, but you should get into the habit of seeking out and taking advantage of these situations so that it does become automatic for the situations where it's crucial in order to make a hand rather than going off.

36
Precision and OCP / Strong Club Systems
« on: April 05, 2017, 11:33:24 PM »
This Board is available to discuss any Strong Club systems, including Precision, Super-Precision and OCP.

OCP, however, has its own website ( http://ocp.pigpen.org.uk ) and its own (pretty busy) Discussion Forum ( http://ocp.pigpen.org.uk/smf/index.php ) so if you want to discuss OCP with people who know the system, you may do better to discuss it there.

37
IAC Website / Problems signing in to the IAC Website?
« on: April 05, 2017, 08:30:28 PM »
If you are having problems signing in to the IAC Website, please make sure the following items are all true:

If you are complying with all of the above:
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    • Now you should be good to go next time.
  • If signing in manually doesn't work, then request a Password Reset on the drop-down menu at the very top of the IAC window:
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  • Click on the link in the Email and you will receive an email which will give your new password.

38
The IAC Café / Welcome to the IAC Forums
« on: April 04, 2017, 07:08:26 PM »
Hi,

Welcome to the IAC Forums. This is something of an experiment at this stage to see if there is an appetite for a Discussion Forum within the club. The range of Boards may expand or contract depending on your wishes and how much they get used.

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