Posted 2010-December-09, 16:32
The bidding might help us assess the chances of the heart hook.....on any likely auction, it seems to me that LHO might well lead from KJ10.....especially if he knows declarer has a stiff.....he'd want to minimize the chances of our taking the hook....imagine he led a trump, we draw trump, test the spades, lead a club and find neither black suit works....now we fall back on the heart hook....good opps listen to the bidding and make leads to reduce our options.
Having said that, the heart hook is not going to be better than 50% and the combination of black suit chances makes taking the first round hook inadvisable.
I'd win the Ace, and lead a club to the J. Assume it loses.
Whatever they return, we can arrange to ruff the two hearts, unblock the club A and end up in dummy cashing the last trumps.
We win if the KQ clubs onside (25% or so) and if spades are 3-3 (about 35.5%) and if the same hand has 5+ clubs and 4+ spades (altho if anyone has a stiff club, we may see our Ace ruffed if we are unlucky. The KQ chance and the 3-3 chance are not strictly additive...we test the one and then hope for the other, so the spade chance is actually approximately 35.5% of the 75% that the club KQ are not both onside.
However, and this depends to some degree on the bidding, the fact that LHO did not lead the club K may slightly increase the chances that RHO has that holding.....the a priori odds of LHO holding KQ are part of why the odds of RHO not holding them both are 75%....reduce the odds of KQ on the left, and that increases the odds of it being on the right.
So I think Fluffy's 55% is closer to the true chances of the line, albeit not for the reasons he may have assumed.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
MP. 6♦S, lead is the ♥J.
(edit: opps silent, of course)