[lamford]

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There is a well-known scam, called the Three-Card Monte, which often uses the queen of spades. Sleight of hand is used to defraud innocent passers-by, but this is not of that type. North showed a game-try with a possible, but not guaranteed, shortage, and South indicated that he would accept opposite short clubs. East led the four of clubs (third and fifth) to West's ten and North's ace. Who has the subject of Tchaikovsky's opera, Пиковая дама?

[pescetom]

lamford, on 2018-September-14, 18:28, said:

Who has the subject of Tchaikovsky's opera, Пиковая дама?

The opponent who plays 3, 7 and Ace ?

[nige1]

lamford, on 2018-September-14, 18:28, said:

There is a well-known scam, called the Three-Card Monte, which often uses the queen of spades. Sleight of hand is used to defraud innocent passers-by, but this is not of that type. North showed a game-try with a possible, but not guaranteed, shortage, and South indicated that he would accept opposite short clubs, East led the four of clubs to West's ten and North's ace. Who has the subject of Tchaikovsky's opera, Пиковая дама?

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Don't know but perhaps you should cash ♠K and then finesse (twice if necessary) because that caters for more trump breaks

[nullve]

♣4 = ?

[The_Badger]

Players who play 21HCP major suit games shouldn't be allowed to find the lady. Full stop

[nullve]

I think West is more likely to have spade length and therefore also the ♠Q, for the following reasons:

1) East didn't lead a heart (often attractive with heart shortness and spade length);
2) West didn't act over 2♠ (easier with, say, 2S3H than 3S2H).

I wonder what kind of bluff and double bluff the subtitle of this thread is referring to. One idea:

It might be possible to trick opps into revealing who most likely has spade length by leading a heart towards dummy at trick 2, because if an opp continues hearts after winning the trick, that would suggest a heart doubleton and therefore more likely spade length. But a clever opp might win and continue hearts with heart length and either spade shortness or ♠xxx(x).

Maybe not a bluff and double bluff, but close.

[lamford]

I think it is too dangerous to play on hearts. What is the club layout? West's play of the ten strongly suggests it is Kxx with East, and QJTx with West, and this is the only suit that is known. This is three times more likely than Kxxx with East and QJT with West, and you should play for the opening leader to have the queen of spades. As the opponents are leading third and fifth, the latter is even more unlikely.

West should have played the jack on the first round, not the ten, unless of course he has Qx(x) in spades! On the actual hand, the opening leader had Qxx Axx Kxxx Kxx.

[nullve]

lamford, on 2018-September-16, 08:31, said:

the opponents are leading third and fifth

I thought I didn't have this piece of information when I asked

nullve, on 2018-September-15, 11:45, said:

♣4 = ?

[mikeh]

The claimed inference from the lead makes no sense to me. However there is an inference available, which may be enough to overcome the normal line in the trump suit. Without doubt, the normal expert line is low to the king and finesse on the way back, catering to Qxxx. One takes a first round hook against east only with very strong reason to place east with Qxxx.

The expert line within the trump suit does risk an improbable heart ruff since we need to lead hearts to get back to dummy.

The inference that might get us to hook against opening leader is from the lack of a trump lead. It is often correct to lead a trump when to opps have had a game try auction. As against that, the auction suggests a club lead, including from Kxx. Declarer has suggested short clubs and dummy has suggested weak clubs

Thus we have a logical reason for a good east to lead clubs, even from relative shortness, offsetting the inference from the non trump lead. And then we have the technical reason for playing to the King and back towards AJ109

All told it’s very close. I’d hook opening leader if I didn’t respect his game...weak players might not work out why they should lead clubs and weak players tend to lead trump indiscriminately

Otherwise I take the better in suit line.

[pescetom]

lamford, on 2018-September-16, 08:31, said:

West should have played the jack on the first round, not the ten, unless of course he has Qx(x) in spades! On the actual hand, the opening leader had Qxx Axx Kxxx Kxx.

I still insist on 3, 7 and Ace.../Queen.
Or was this really a pure bridge discussion?

[rmnka447]

If the opening leader has led ♣ correctly with the lead agreements, it is clearly from 3 or 5 as it is the bottom card that can be held by opening leader. The ♣ 10 play must be from the bottom of a sequence. If it was the top card opening leader would have to hold KQJ and would lead an honor. Likewise, if it's from J10, then opening lead would have to have underled the KQ. From Q10 or K10, it's likely the Q or K would be played. So the only holding that makes sense for the play of the 10 is QJ10(xx). But if QJ10 were tight, opening leader would have 4 ♣ and the ♣ 4 would not be the 3rd or 5th card in the suit, so a different card would have been led.

If this inferential count is correct, wouldn't vacant places make it 10/9 that opening leader has the ♠ Q?

As third hand can read the lead as lowest of 3, the deceptive play of ♣ J would give nothing away about the lie of the ♠ suit to declarer. If the opening lead was from 5, declarer has stiff A and the play in ♣ doesn't matter.

[nullve]

rmnka447, on 2018-September-17, 18:57, said:

So the only holding that makes sense for the play of the 10 is QJ10(xx).

It often makes sense to play the T fom KJT(x...) to find out who has the Q.

rmnka447, on 2018-September-17, 18:57, said:

.
If this inferential count is correct, wouldn't vacant places make it 10/9 that opening leader has the ♠ Q?

If we had nothing else to go on, yes.

[mikeh]

nullve, on 2018-September-18, 14:12, said:

It often makes sense to play the T fom KJT(x...) to find out who has the Q.


If we had nothing else to go on, yes.

While I agree that it is often a good play to insert the 10 from KJ10 when wanting to find where the Queen is, one needs to be concerned about whether this will mislead partner. So here, I'd want to hold the heart Ace to make this play, since I can be fairly sure that I will be able to get in and cash my King, if it is cashing, before declarer gets a pitch.

Unfortunately for declarer, he can't afford to find out where the heart Ace is before playing on trump: too much danger of a ruff lueking.

Also, one needs to be sure that partner did not choose this moment to be cute and underlead an Ace. Personally, the only times I ever underlead an Ace on opening lead against a suit contract is at the 6-level. Others may differ in their approach.

[lamford]

rmnka447, on 2018-September-17, 18:57, said:

If this inferential count is correct, wouldn't vacant places make it 10/9 that opening leader has the ♠ Q?

This is what I think, and here we have the point of the hand; West should play the jack from QJTx if he doesn't have the queen of spades, and the ten from QJTx if he does, but some defenders might be napping and not think of this! Of course, we can go through the bluff and double-bluff many times ...

[mikeh]

lamford, on 2018-September-20, 11:10, said:

This is what I think, and here we have the point of the hand; West should play the jack from QJTx if he doesn't have the queen of spades, and the ten from QJTx if he does, but some defenders might be napping and not think of this! Of course, we can go through the bluff and double-bluff many times ...

I think that you are chasing moonbeams with this inferential count issue. We have so little information and so many vacant spaces that I don't see this as being very important.

As for a defender falsecarding from a sequence, that comment reminds me of what a good friend and partner told me back in the day, when I think he and I were the best imp pair in the country (and he the best player...I was the supporting cast).....we were talking about carding and my views on sometimes trying to be deceptive on defence: I am paraphrasing but he said that I was getting into nuances that 99% of declarers wouldn't even think about, so I was wasting my time.

I doubt firstly that there are many players in the world who would choose to falsecard here, and even fewer would do so based on whether they have the spade Queen!

[lamford]

mikeh, on 2018-September-20, 12:56, said:

I think that you are chasing moonbeams with this inferential count issue. We have so little information and so many vacant spaces that I don't see this as being very important.

It is said of Arthur Balfour, a thoughtful man who was Britain's Prime Minister early in the last century, that he once arrived at a dinner party and spent twenty minutes in the lobby pondering. It seems he was trying to think of a logical reason for ascending the double staircase by the left route rather than the right or vice versa.

There is very little to go on here, but I think it is right to play the opening leader for the queen of trumps for several reasons, in addition to the vacant spaces argument from the club count.

a) Someone who accepts a game-try opposite short clubs is likely to have xxx or xxxx in the suit, which makes the club lead from Kxx more dangerous, suggesting an honour in every suit. The opening leader did have Qxx Axx Axxx Kxx. I don't think you can conclude that North has short clubs. She might have no shortage at all and 2NT also serves as a WET.
b) I don't think anyone would lead a trump here from Qx(x) but might do so from xx(x) and very likely would do so from xxxx, so we don't need to worry about stiff Q with West.
c) We know that the opening leader does not have the ♦AK so that increases the chance that he has the queen of spades still further.

Chatting with a top player, we thought the chance of the queen of spades with the opening leader, on the information we have, was maybe as high as 60%.