[Fluffy]

---

Garozzo on your Left, leads ♠7.

You beat ♠Q with your ace and lead a diamond, He plays ♦K


A couple hands later this one comes:

---

Lead is ♣2 (attitude) dummy wins and you play a spade.

East (Garozzo) flies with ♠A and leads ♥J

EDIT: Yup Timo, it is East who plays the Ace and leads ♥J

[MrAce]

On hand 1 i would duck. If i ever gonna duck a ♦ with these diamonds in dummy and hand, this must be the textbook example for it after this lead. Idk their leads and i dunno how we can possibly make if G has ♦ K stiff. We have to play him either for Kx KQ KQx, i would play him for Kx or KQ. I would be wrong if he had stiff K dia and E has the K of spades. I would not worry about W holding KQx ♦, he would probably play low on first card and if not, i would pay off to him.

On hand 2, i would just claim, unless Garozzo sits one hand W and one hand E. but i assume you tried to make it easier for readers and rearranged S and N. He may be leading ♥J from AJ9x(x) surrounding, or QJ9x(x) to be deceptive. Anyway, i do not see anything wrong with ducking the first ♥ except one position.. I do not think You will find W with AQxxx ♥ in this auction, even though G is very capable of playing J from Jxx and you bail 4 heart tricks to AQxx on left which looks like the only likely scenario to lose. I'd rather pay off to such a good defense and duck the first ♥.

EDIT: Checking the hand records now, there was no losing play on hand #2, but you played the same as i did as well as hand #1.

[Lord Molyb]

1. Duck, if he returns a heart/club I play ♦A next, if he returns a spade, low from east, he probably has ♦KQx and I finesse the diamond. If he returns a spade to the king, not sure how I play the diamonds yet.

2. ...Cover?

[HighLow21]

MrAce, on 2014-March-01, 19:19, said:

On hand 1 i would duck. If i ever gonna duck a ♦ with these diamonds in dummy and hand, this must be the textbook example for it after this lead. Idk their leads and i dunno how we can possibly make if G has ♦ K stiff. We have to play him either for Kx KQ KQx, i would play him for Kx or KQ. I would be wrong if he had stiff K dia and E has the K of spades. I would not worry about W holding KQx ♦, he would probably play low on first card and if not, i would pay off to him.

On hand 2, i would just claim, unless Garozzo sits one hand W and one hand E. but i assume you tried to make it easier for readers and rearranged S and N. He may be leading ♥J from AJ9x(x) surrounding, or QJ9x(x) to be deceptive. Anyway, i do not see anything wrong with ducking the first ♥ except one position.. I do not think You will find W with AQxxx ♥ in this auction, even though G is very capable of playing J from Jxx and you bail 4 heart tricks to AQxx on left which looks like the only likely scenario to lose. I'd rather pay off to such a good defense and duck the first ♥.

EDIT: Checking the hand records now, there was no losing play on hand #2, but you played the same as i did as well as hand #1.

Agreed 100%. Hand #1 is not a guess. Hand #2 is iffy, but not covering seems foolish to me.

[MrAce]

HighLow21, on 2014-March-02, 16:29, said:

Agreed 100%. Hand #1 is not a guess. Hand #2 is iffy, but not covering seems foolish to me.

I can see why an expert player would chose to cover. Covering may as well be the correct play on this hand. But if one thinks ducking is foolish, especially w/o telling us what is he playing for by covering and why ducking is foolish, it is a sign of not being capable of seeing the dangers even though dangers were written previously

I see looking at board index that you are on a reply spree in all topics. And before you post things in order to increase your post number, i strongly suggest you think b4 you post. LOL at what you agreed, i did not say hand 1 has no losing option. Sometimes remaining silent is the best way to hide your level

I will stop further debates with you, until you have a clue about how deep the rabbit hole goes. But i strongly doubt it.

[HighLow21]

MrAce, on 2014-March-02, 18:30, said:

I can see why an expert player would chose to cover. Covering may as well be the correct play on this hand. But if one thinks ducking is foolish, especially w/o telling us what is he playing for by covering and why ducking is foolish, it is a sign of not being capable of seeing the dangers even though dangers were written previously

I will stop further debates with you, until you have a clue about how deep the rabbit hole goes. But i strongly doubt it.

Well for one thing, it risks going down in a cold contract whenever the heart is from Jx(x).

It also creates a guess on the next round when RHO leads a small heart.

Not sure I need to see how deep the rabbit hole goes when the obvious thing to play for loses if I duck, and I will STILL face a guess on the next heart if I duck.

I also caveated that in Hand #2 the decision was iffy, in strong contrast to Hand #1, wherein there is absolutely no logical guess whatsoever in my mind. In Hand #1, you are dead meat if the K♦ is singleton. So you must assume it isn't.

I also said in Hand #2 that not covering SEEMED foolish TO ME. Seemed. But that doesn't mean that ducking isn't the right play. It is definitely correct if the lead is a deceptive one from QJ9x(x).

And seriously, there's no need to get nasty with me by making assumptions about how weak my thought process may be in your mind, or what my motives for posting a lot may be. Especially when I've been complimentary to you here and elsewhere.

You don't know me, and I don't presume to know you. I also presume these boards are for learning about and debating bridge decisions. Not attacking people.

Attack the argument, not the person. You would be wise to take this advice to heart.

[MrAce]

HighLow21, on 2014-March-02, 18:37, said:

. Especially when I've been complimentary to you here and elsewhere.

This is something i really could not care less.

Other things that you wrote, except than your opinions about this hand and how obvious it is to play, you are right and i agree with you that i could have used better sentences and i could have kept my presumptions to myself.

I apologize for that.

[HighLow21]

MrAce, on 2014-March-02, 18:47, said:

This is something i really could not care less.

Other things that you wrote, except than your opinions about this hand and how obvious it is to play, you are right and i agree with you that i could have used better sentences and i could have kept my presumptions to myself.

I apologize for that.

Excellent response. I accept your apology and I will extend my own: I simply meant to say that ducking seemed foolish to me, and that was flippant. My response that Hand #2 should have been: "Hand #2 seems iffy to me; I think covering is wiser but it could go either way."

I probably should add that if I go down on Hand #2 I will have to compliment RHO on his brilliant defense. He put me to an early guess and I guessed wrong. Excellent job.

Final thought: in my book, it takes a big person to apologize when they're called out on something, rather than firing back or defending. Thank you for your mature, thoughtful reply.

[bluecalm]

The Italians lead attitude right ? Then 7 denies Ks unless it's exactly KT87 while without K it could be T87+/987+; T97+ I think leads T in their style.
I am not sure how he is playing with JEC though.
KdQd is about as likely as stiff Kd while spades are probably KQ on the right (way more combinations without Ks against one with Ks). That means playing an ace and is right more often than not imo. All this assuming he is playing with JEC the same way the Italians play among themselves.

[Fluffy]

Good point bluecalm, this is a problem with us sitting in the middle of the match, we carefully told them twice our agreements, but they didn't care to elaborate. The worst about ducking ♦K is not ♦KQx that as MrAce said its unlikely, it is to duck the stiff King when ♠K is onside, losing our 9th trick.

[gnasher]

Fluffy, if you wanted to know what their leads were, why didn't you ask? It's particularly easy at JEC's table, because Larry will answer any questions that you ask.

On the first one, I would enquire about their leads. When they told me it was attitude, I'd ask what they lead from 107xx, 97xx and 87xx. Assuming that the 7 is consistent with at least one of these, I'd play the ace.

On the second one, after the attitude ♣2 lead, I don't see how RHO could know to switch from Jxx or Jxxx, so I agree with Timo that we should duck the first one. On the next round I'd play the king, partly because it's a restricted choice position, and partly because Garozzo may not have wanted to risk confusing his client when the suit is Axxx-10xx-QJ9x-Kx around the table.

[Fluffy]

Larry was not online

[MrAce]

Fluffy, on 2014-March-03, 04:31, said:

Larry was not online

I think Larry Lande quit organizing job, no ?

[Fluffy]

yeah I was getting essages from ironwoman1 (or something like), but she was not online the time I wanted to know about their methods.

[gnasher]

I hadn't realised that. Still, it doesn't make a lot of difference. You ask "What are your leads?", and then you wait for an answer. If they haven't answered after a minute or so, you ask it again. They can't force you to play before you've had an answer.

[bluecalm]

They have "attitude" in all their convention cards but they actually lead 3rd one from weak suits and the lowest one from good suits.
I know that because I saw a lot of vugraph hands. I would never guess that from "attitude" description.

[MrAce]

I just checked the hand records of JEC. And i checked their style of leading vs NT contracts.

10932 ---led 10 (JEC)

QJ42 -- led 2 (JEC)

J876 --- led 6 (JEC)

AK985 --led 8 (B.Goth)

JT42 --led 2 (Gar)

QJ985 - led Q (Gar)

J87632 - led 6 (JEC)

7654 - led 6 (JEC)

AJ982 - led 8 (JEC)

. None of these suits were bid by pd or the opening leader, neither was shown via lead directing dbl.

These dudes are pretty much leading 4th best except than when they are leading from xxxx. They have some other leads that they made, such as T from ATx , but i did not put them because those were more of a "how to play this suit to the best of our benefit in this auction or position" leads rather than a systemic lead.

[bluecalm]

Quote

These dudes are pretty much leading 4th best except than when they are leading from xxxx

The question is what they do when he play with Garozzo. Garozzo leads what all other Italians do: 3rd from bad suits, low from good ones. From some hand records I saw he does that on BBO as well. The question is what does he do while playing with JEC and if he plays the same way JEC does

[MrAce]

bluecalm, on 2014-March-03, 19:12, said:

The question is what they do when he play with Garozzo. Garozzo leads what all other Italians do: 3rd from bad suits, low from good ones. From some hand records I saw he does that on BBO as well. The question is what does he do while playing with JEC and if he plays the same way JEC does

Obviously they are not leading attitude, since they led 4th from AKxxx where 4th card was ambitious spot and they led 8 from AJ982. some of those JEC leads posted were when G was his pd.