[The_Badger]

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IMPs Teams. North leads ♥3. Plan the play.

Additional info (After first two replies by Tramticket and Cyberyeti): South discards a ♥ on first round of trumps.

[Tramticket]

AK clubs. If trumps are drawn lead a diamond towards dummy and attempt to duck a diamond. If North puts in a diamond honour, go up with the king and lead a second diamond, intending to duck if South plays an honour.

[Cyberyeti]

Tramticket, on 2017-October-05, 05:31, said:

AK clubs. If trumps are drawn lead a diamond towards dummy and attempt to duck a diamond. If North puts in a diamond honour, go up with the king and lead a second diamond, intending to duck if South plays an honour.

Ruff the extra heart first, can't do any harm, but yes your plan is correct, and critical when S has a stiff diamond honour so you don't have to guess the spades.

[wank]

you can do a lot better than the first 2 replies. no need to hope for nice layout of diamonds.

[Tramticket]

wank, on 2017-October-05, 08:49, said:

you can do a lot better than the first 2 replies. no need to hope for nice layout of diamonds.

Yes, I missed that we can discard a diamond on the ace of hearts and ruff the diamond good.

But if clubs are not breaking we need North to hold at least two diamonds (likely after the pre-empt). so ...

- draw one trump
- A♥ discarding a diamond.
- A♦, diamond to the king and ruff a diamond high, club to the nine and ruff another diamond high if north still holds a diamond, draw the last trump and discard a spade on the fifth diamond.

Is that it?

[Tramticket]

Tramticket, on 2017-October-05, 09:16, said:

Yes, I missed that we can discard a diamond on the ace of hearts and ruff the diamond good.

But if clubs are not breaking we need North to hold at least two diamonds (likely after the pre-empt). so ...

- draw one trump
- A♥ discarding a diamond.
- A♦, diamond to the king and ruff a diamond high, club to the nine and ruff another diamond high if north still holds a diamond, draw the last trump and discard a spade on the fifth diamond.

Is that it?

Third attempt! (This is embarrassing):
- Duck trick 1 (South wins and can't attack spades)
- Win the return and discard a diamond on the ace of hearts - then ruff the diamonds good

[Winstonm]

Small from dummy on opening lead. Win the presumed heart return, pitching a diamond - and when the club 8 holds, use the remaining two club entries to ruff out and cash either the 4th and 5th or only the 5th diamond. If the second diamond is ruffed - say Sh%t and try to guess the spade return right to escape for down 1.

[msjennifer]

Assuming that the second diamond is going to be ruffed and a spade is returned then what? If the spade AQ are wrong it’s one down.As a novice would play it hoping for split honors in spades ,just draw all trumps and lead a spade.If the honors are split you have 11tricks.

[dokoko]

When you start to play the hand, you only know of a probable 3-7 heart break from the bidding.

Drawing trumps then leading spades twice towards dummy is a 87.5% shot (probabibility for S holding both honors: 6/16*5/15). Even knowing the 3-0 club break the probability of success is still about 80% (21/26).

I don't think any of the lines proposed beats this.

[mlbridge]

Take the A♥ and ruff a♥
Test ♣ and see if 3-0
If 3-0, lead twice towards the ♠
If not 3-0, play K and A of ♦, then lead a ♠ and hope south does not have more than 2 ♦

[Tramticket]

dokoko, on 2017-October-06, 00:57, said:

When you start to play the hand, you only know of a probable 3-7 heart break from the bidding.

Drawing trumps then leading spades twice towards dummy is a 87.5% shot (probabibility for S holding both honors: 6/16*5/15). Even knowing the 3-0 club break the probability of success is still about 80% (21/26).

I don't think any of the lines proposed beats this.

If you duck the heart and discard a diamond on the ace of hearts you fail if
- diamonds are 5-0 or 4-1 (south holding the four hearts) - this rates to be about 9% by my calculation
- AND South needs to have the critical spade honour (ace or queen depending up whether you play the king or knave). But South will be known to hold about seven hearts and four diamonds compared with three hearts, one diamond and three spade with North - so it is 6:2 that North will hold the critical honour.

Overall, I think that this is close to a 98% chance of success and easily beats leading twice towards the spades.


I have already made mistakes in this thread - so feel free to let me know if this is another!

[dokoko]

Tramticket, on 2017-October-06, 05:51, said:

If you duck the heart and discard a diamond on the ace of hearts you fail if
- diamonds are 5-0 or 4-1 (south holding the four hearts) - this rates to be about 9% by my calculation
- AND South needs to have the critical spade honour (ace or queen depending up whether you play the king or knave). But South will be known to hold about seven hearts and four diamonds compared with three hearts, one diamond and three spade with North - so it is 6:2 that North will hold the critical honour.

Overall, I think that this is close to a 98% chance of success and easily beats leading twice towards the spades.


I have already made mistakes in this thread - so feel free to let me know if this is another!

I have re-calculated the odds of North being short in diamonds (about 9% as you say) - holding 7 known cards South is about twice as likely to be short in diamonds as North with 6 known cards.

So you are right that ducking the first heart is the better line. You should, however, draw one round of trumps before ruffing out the diamonds; otherwise you also lose when South is short in diamonds (and not void in clubs). You cannot afford a second round as you need 2 trump entries to dummy after the first ruff if diamonds if they split 4-1.

You are wrong that you can survive a diamond shortness with North. The defense takes a heart, the ruff and ♠A to beat the contract.