[jahol]

Sometimes I am not sure, whether my problem is worth to be presented in expert forum.. but in these two cases, I think so...

1) You have

Scoring: IMP

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and the bidding is

4H-pass-pass-???

Do you pass or double?

2)After simple bidding
RHO---YOU---LHO---P
-P------1H-----P-----1NT
-P------2H-----P------3H
-P------4H

you should make the contract with

Scoring: IMP

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The lead is small trumph (H4).

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

#1 Pass, as long as you play X as T/O this is a wtp.
#2 Abstain, the last try is not long enough past.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[ewj]

Pass, nothing else is even close I'm afraid

[hotShot]

1) pass, you'll get 3 tricks and if partner has anything worth a trick opps are down.
Your partner is likely to be void or single in ♥, still he had no bid over 4♥.

2) Opps already found a good lead, so I expect them to keep that level.
If opps can prevent you from entering dummy, theres a good chance you'll go down.
So you could make, but ....

[Fluffy]

Put some pressure on the table and lead ♦Q at trick 2 from hand. Lead makes LHO big favourite to hold the ace, but ducking it will be very hard.

First one I am afraid is an easy pass, double is take out for every expert I know, and partner is so likelly taking it off for a bad result.

[wclass___]

I think that lead indeed makes LHO favorite to have ♦A, but it also makes LHO even bigger favorite to have ♠A and/or ♣. If he has 1 or 2 aces he is more likely to lead ♠ or ♣ rather than diamond , so if LHO has 2 aces, he is likely to have exactly ♣A & ♠A.

If LHO has ♠A it is an entry for diamonds, so trying to establish ♦ via percentage play seems logical.

What i tried to say is that i think possibility of LHO having all 3 missing aces makes him favorite to have ♦A, but is ♦Q best chance in that case? If he doesn't have all 3 aces, i don't see why he is favorite to have ♦A.

[peachy]

1) Pass.

3) Neither opp has all three aces unless they also have 4-card hearts because they might have doubled 1H or 1NT. Since they started pulling trump, I will draw two more and then go after diamonds, blessed with the 109 instead of smaller spots. If all goes well, losing 2 diamonds and a spade. But I might go down...

[fachiru]

1) A bit too little for a takeout X at the 4 level.
It may work allright, but it may also turn a likely small plus into a big minus once doubling starts.
If I was looking for a top and didn't mind a bottom, I'd X; otherwise Pass.

2)I'd win 1st trick in hand and play a low ♦ at T2. If that held, I'd pull trumps and play the Q♦ from hand again. If the initial small ♦ loses to the Q, I should be still in good shape (unless loses to Qx, ♦ return to A and a ruff....curtains)

[jahol]

1)Yes, I agree that my hand was too weak to bid something other than pass (actually, I am very happy with the total agreement of the experts here). I passed and this was the board

Scoring: IMP

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Even six spades can be made, four hearts contract is one down. The opening bid worked very nice in this case, we lost some IMPs.

2)I took the trumph lead in dummy with jack and played small D to the qeen immediately, which took the trick. Since I was affraid of the diamond ruff scenario and did not see any good reason, I should not cash trumphs, I did it in three rounds. I continued with diamonds then - small to the jack and king ducked by the opponents. How would you continue?

[Fluffy]

how do you continue?? with the third diamond of course, some hearts will help opponents more than us

[jahol]

In the actual layout, third diamond does not help (but does not make any harm either). The reason for playing two rounds of diamond was to find any opponent with dubbleton ace, since there would have been no problem with entering dummy in such case.

Now, the attention should be, in my opinion, switched to spades, since the contract, surprisingly, may still have some good chances to be made. You may need to ruff one club in hand and to play small spade to spade 7. There are distributions of spades, the contract may be done, as, for example:

LHO----------RHO
J(10)xx------AJ(10)xx
AJ(10)x-----J(10)xxx

In the first case, you simply ruff club return and play second round of spades to the king.... after ruffing next round of clubs, spade J(10) will be killed with spade queen and spade 9 is high.
In the second case, the course is the same. Of course, if the opponents do not play spade ace in the second round, your spades are blocked, but you just entered the dummy... :-)

The complete board:

Scoring: IMP

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[gnasher]

jahol, on Jan 20 2010, 01:42 PM, said:

In the actual layout, third diamond does not help (but does not make any harm either). The reason for playing two rounds of diamond was to find any opponent with dubbleton ace, since there would have been no problem with entering dummy in such case.

That's only one of the reasons for playing diamonds. The second reason is that West may have ♠A, in which case ♠K is an entry to cash the diamonds. But only if you remember to play a third round of diamonds.

[jahol]

Of course, you are right. Playing third round of diamonds is more less automatic, spades can wait.

Still there is (not 100%, but some) indication that spade ace is in RHO hand. I do not think, two rounds of diamonds would have been ducked, if (both!) opponents had seen that there was spade entry into the dummy.