Here are the hanfds and discussion from the 5/28/20 session.
Note: There is an error in the discussion on Bd. 13. I was going to swap the Q and 10 of hearts so that if a declarer got down to the heart guess, it would work for the drop but not the smother - that was based on my assumption that the only holdings of importance were ones with either 10x offside or Qx in either hand. I never explained why I thought that Qx was a 2:1 proposition vs. 10x. That is because I eliminated all unimportant distributions to make the the hand given that I had already tested for a singleton Q or 10 - I considered a double finesse in hearts to be too hard to execute with transportation issues unless I was banking everything on that position, so it was also discarded. That left the 3-2 splits and only a few relevant. Because the Qx would work both on and off side, but the 10x would only work if offside and the x's were the same for both, that made it essentially twice as likely to be Qx than 10x.
The play that actually works is the lower percentage smother the 10 to finesse the Q.
I think the play of the
AK, followed by a try for a
-
squeeze, is the best shot although it fails here. It works if the
Q drops, which should be about 1/3 of the time, and it works if the
Q doesn't drop but the
Q is with the long
in either hand.
Assume a club lead since that attacks entries. Win (of course) and cash the
AK. The Q doesn't drop. So now play
A and go back to the bard with a
. We now run the
. The threats are the
J and the
5 so, in the lingo, it is an automatic double squeeze meaning a two suit squeeze that operates as long as one opponent, either one, holds the
Q and 4+ in
. After the
are cashed the position is
J
93
5
opposite
AKQ5
Whoever holds the
Q has to keep it, so if he also started with 4+ diamonds then he had to toss one of them and now
run.
Unfortunately the
Q and the long
are in opposite hands so this fails.
I think the odds are upwards of 60%. Failure requires the
Q not to fall under the AK and then requires that the
Q and the long
be in separate hands. The
Q fails to drop about 2/3 of the time, then the long
fails to be with the
Q a little more than 1/2 the time so, multiplying 2/3 by 1/2, we conclude that both possibilities fail a bit more than 1/3 of the time.
If the lead is a
or a
then there is another squeeze option, one that works here, although surely not the line that would be recommended. It goes as follows:
Cash the
AKQ throwing a
from dummy, cash the
A, go to the board with the
A, run the
.
After cashing the 4th
it looks like this:
T
J9
K5
AK8
5
T
Now the last
is led and N must come down to four cards. If he tosses a
we can toss a
and take the remaining tricks. If he instead tosses a
then he now holds three
and only 1
. So we toss a
and play the
AK, squeezing S in
and
.
This works. I have not calculated out the odds but surely cashing the
AK and then going for the simple automatic is the better line. Except, of course, that this latter line works. Added: I think the odds of this line working are moderately better than 25%. It requires that the long hearts to be to the right of declarer and the long hearts to be on the left. It's somewhat better than 50% that the long hearts will be in the hand opposite the one with the long diamonds, and then we cout that in half since we want the hearts to the right, the diamonds to the left.
Summary: I think the first squeeze line is the line most likely to succeed, although it fails here. The second squeeze line displays one of the many faces of squeeze play and so I included it for amusement, but I very much doubt it has the best odds of success. it does work, although a
lead would prevent declarer from playing this way.
And still more beating of this poor horse: Squeezes are often discussed in lessons, this hand illustrates several features. The
threat has to be the 5 since the three spots in the dummy fall under the AKQ. But for !h we have a choice. The
AK brings down two spots in dummy, but either the third heart in dummy or the third heart in hand could be used as a
threat. For tis hand, using the
J on the board rather than the 8 in the hand as the threat gives the better odds, or so I claim, but using the
8 in hand together with the
5 and the
5 for the double squeeze is the one that actually works as the cards are.
This squeeze stuff can easily get out of hand, I will now shut up.
