[pescetom]

Last round of a MP tournament and your enterprising partner in N decides to boldly go where the rest of the field would not, placing you in a final contract of 7NT.

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Opponents are not very good, although W is experienced. They are vulnerable and had remained silent during the auction. W leads 9 of diamonds and E covers T with Q, which helps but raises doubts. Spades split evenly and on the fourth, W discards a small diamond and E a small heart. You lead small club to A and W tables the 9, E the 5, both in tempo. Back to hand and you lead the J: W hesitates and tables the 6.

What do you play now, and why?

[nullve]

Auction?

[Trick13]

Before the hesitation I was planning to play the K - West's diamond plays are suggestive of a 5+ suit.
But what to make of the hesitation? It is the end of a tournament when heads get fuzzy. West will be trying to concentrate very hard on defending a grand slam, and the J♣ may have been an unexpected card.
At the club I would not be surprised if the finesse lost, and I wouldn't necessarily think West was deliberately trying to mislead me.
If I finesse and it loses am I going to call the director?
If I decide I will, then, before calling for a card from dummy, I will say that I was planning to play for the drop but have been persuaded to by the delay in following to finesse.
If not I might play the K.

[Cyberyeti]

Trick13, on 2018-December-16, 17:53, said:

Before the hesitation I was planning to play the K - West's diamond plays are suggestive of a 5+ suit.
But what to make of the hesitation? It is the end of a tournament when heads get fuzzy. West will be trying to concentrate very hard on defending a grand slam, and the J♣ may have been an unexpected card.
At the club I would not be surprised if the finesse lost, and I wouldn't necessarily think West was deliberately trying to mislead me.
If I finesse and it loses am I going to call the director?
If I decide I will, then, before calling for a card from dummy, I will say that I was planning to play for the drop but have been persuaded to by the delay in following to finesse.
If not I might play the K.

This is one you won't win if you wheel in the man. You know that W has nothing to think about whichever holding he has (playing the Q never gains) so it's purely inattention. I lost a similar ruling with Kx/AJxxxxx when the guy hesitated with a stiff.

[dokoko]

I would have led ♣J to the ace at trick two.

In any case I would have to be at the table in order to decide how to play the clubs. Whatever happens, if I guess wrong, I will not expect to win the hand by ruling. I will only call the TD if I think that LHO deliberately tried to mislead me; even then it's only to get him punished.

[johnu]

pescetom, on 2018-December-16, 16:30, said:

W leads 9 of diamonds and E covers T with Q, which helps but raises doubts. Spades split evenly and on the fourth, W discards a small diamond and E a small heart. You lead small club to A and W tables the 9, E the 5, both in tempo. Back to hand and you lead the J: W hesitates and tables the 6.

What do you play now, and why?

I might do something different if you had shown the bidding. You might think the bidding doesn't matter and it might not, but then again, maybe it does.

Let's go back to trick 1. Counting tricks, you can't take 13 tricks without bringing in the club suit. On a heart lead, this could be one of those hands where you can't even make 3NT if everything goes wrong, and 6NT is going down if you only have 1 heart stopper that gets knocked out on the opening lead, and you lose a club trick.

I don't see the point in setting up additional tricks for the defense when it really doesn't help you to refine the count on the hand, and leads to more than down 1 if you lose a club trick.

I would win the diamond opening lead, and then lead the ♣J at trick 2, playing a high club if not covered. Then a couple of high spades before playing another club. I don't know what to do (playing for the drop is the slight percentage play) but I'm not losing more than 1 trick if I guess wrong or if East has the guarded ♣Q

[The_Badger]

johnu, on 2018-December-16, 20:50, said:

I don't see the point in setting up additional tricks for the defense when it really doesn't help you to refine the count on the hand, and leads to more than down 1 if you lose a club trick.

I would win the diamond opening lead, and then lead the ♣J at trick 2, playing a high club if not covered. Then a couple of high spades before playing another club. I don't know what to do (playing for the drop is the slight percentage play) but I'm not losing more than 1 trick if I guess wrong or if East has the guarded ♣Q

Yes this or similar. Except if the defensive hands are freakily-shaped, I believe you're not going to be able to suss out whether to take the drop or take the finesse. And if East has three ♣s to the Q you're going down - and that's stating the very, very obvious. Playing a ♣ and unblocking at trick two just looks a better line than playing on ♣s later. If I were put to a guess I'll finesse the ♣Q here simply as a finesse is a 50% chance as opposed to a 2-2 drop at 40% and that East has already turned up with the ♦Q.

The auction here would have helped too. The standard lead against 7NT is, I believe, to lead as passive as possible. If declarer has thirteen tricks off the top then it doesn't matter what you do on defence. Here, it's different, and I would want to try to figure out as declarer why West chose a ♦.

[nige1]

pescetom writes "Last round of a MP tournament and your enterprising partner in N decides to boldly go where the rest of the field would not, placing you in 7NT.Opponents are not very good, although W is experienced. They are vulnerable and had remained silent during the auction. W leads 9 of diamonds and E covers T with Q, which helps but raises doubts. Spades split evenly and on the fourth, W discards a small diamond and E a small heart. You lead small club to A and W tables the 9, E the 5, both in tempo. Back to hand and you lead the J: W hesitates and tables the 6. What do you play now, and why?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
IMO, if you guess that the rest of the field will be at a lower level, then you should make every effort to elicit distributional clues.
Win ♦Q with ♦A.
After taking a minute or two to plan the pay, advance ♣J, in tempo, going up ♣A.
- If ♣Q appears or RHO shows out, then claim.
- if LHO hesitates, then draw attention to the BIT.
- Otherwise cash ♠AKQx, ♦K, ♥A, and ♦J.
- At trick 9, lead a second ♣. Now...
- - With no clue from the play so far, you should play for the drop.
- - If you feel that the (probably inferential) count indicates that LHO is likely to be longer in ♣s, then you should finesse.

---

[BillHiggin]

Even without seeing the bidding, I can be sure that we have taken a shot in the auction. I do not add another shot on to that. Other than giving them an early chance to make a mistake (i.e. lead J towards dummy early), I am playing for the slight advantage of playing for the drop.
if this rated to be the field contract and I needed a shot, then the hook is a way to do that.
I do not attempt to read the hesitation.

[pescetom]

nullve, on 2018-December-16, 17:21, said:

Auction?

I don't think it helps much, but I added it to the OP, as best I remember. In any case North knew we were missing Q♣ and K♥, but I don't think opponents followed that. West had a chance to overcall the 1♦ opening.

Catch up on the rest later, thanks to all for comments.

[eagles123]

in my experience the hesitation makes it very likely that W DOESNT have the Q. the time to finesse is when u play J and west plays small before your card has even hit the table!!!!

[pescetom]

johnu, on 2018-December-16, 20:50, said:

I don't see the point in setting up additional tricks for the defense when it really doesn't help you to refine the count on the hand, and leads to more than down 1 if you lose a club trick.

I played off the spades in the hope that discards might give me some clue about the opponent's distribution - there maybe at least a sequence of diamonds are in West, but how are the 9 cards in hearts split? I had no concern about setting up additional tricks because I figured that any negative score was a near certain MP bottom here anyway.

Sure, I didn't learn much, and East's heart discard is ambiguous. All the same, I approached the decisive round of clubs thinking it was marginally likely East had more red cards than West.

West's hesitation is ambiguous too - as Cyberyeti says, in terms of pure bridge logic she has no choice to make anyway, but that cuts both ways - if she has no choice, why hesitate? She showed no such "inattention" when following to the first round of clubs. But I can't count on her whatever her intentions are, so I ruled this factor out, at least consciously.

That left the red cards, and so I ducked, East then facing the Queen.

This was of course the difference between bottom and top, with most of the field in 3NT+x and the rest in clubs or 6NT, nobody else going down.

[Edit: see ahead for opponent's hands]

[kuhchung]

The chance to make a discovery play would be on a previous board to see if they hitch. Just use your judgment now. If no read, just go with the percentage play

[johnu]

pescetom, on 2018-December-17, 12:33, said:

This was of course the difference between bottom and top, with most of the field in 3NT+x and the rest in clubs or 6NT, nobody else going down. For the record, East held ♥T73 ♦98765 and West ♥KQ6542 ♦Q3.

You switched East and West, and hearts can't be KQ6542 because North has ♥Q. Assuming you meant KJxxxx, it's the luck of the draw that ♥Q can't be successfully attacked on the opening lead.

[nullve]

pescetom, on 2018-December-17, 12:33, said:

East held ♥T73 ♦98765 and West ♥KQ6542 ♦Q3.

West led the ♦9, didn't he, so I suppose you meant to say that West held ♥T73 ♦98765 and East ♥KQ6542 ♦Q3.

So if, after a top club, three spade and three diamond tricks, West follows suit on a club towards dummy, he must be either 3352 or 3253. But

W: 3352 E: 3622

is 3/2*7/3 =7/2 as likely as

W: 3253 E: 3721

a priori, and even more likely now that East didn't make any noise over 2♣.

So takihg the club finesse seems (very) wrong on that line.

Am I missing something?

[pescetom]

Yes those EW holdings are switched, sorry. Now corrected.

You are maybe missing that there were as I recall only two rounds of diamonds, not three. I'll think it through when at home thanks.

[pescetom]

Here is the full layout for clarity.

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nullve, on 2018-December-17, 17:01, said:

So if, after a top club, three spade and three diamond tricks, West follows suit on a club towards dummy, he must be either 3352 or 3253. But

W: 3352 E: 3622

is 3/2*7/3 =7/2 as likely as

W: 3253 E: 3721

a priori, and even more likely now that East didn't make any noise over 2♣.

East is both rather timid and vulnerable, so her silence over 2♣ may not mean much. I figured that yes, silence argued against holding 7 card hearts, but also against holding the Q♣ which would have meant she had most of their 9 HCP.

But otherwise your reasoning is impeccable, and would be a logical and successful conclusion of my line of play. For some reason I only took two diamond tricks, and with the information I had I tended towards W being 3343 and E 3631. Taking the third diamond I could hardly get it wrong. It was late.

[pescetom]

I hoped somebody would mention symmetry here. I have read before that an even split in our own short suit would suggest a similar split in theirs, and vice versa. So my 2-2 ♥ here would be more reason to go for the drop in ♣. Does anyone know if this is true and if so what are the odds are in this case, compared to pure chance (41%)?

[Tramticket]

pescetom, on 2018-December-18, 08:11, said:

I hoped somebody would mention symmetry here. I have read before that an even split in our own short suit would suggest a similar split in theirs, and vice versa. So my 2-2 ♥ here would be more reason to go for the drop in ♣. Does anyone know if this is true and if so what are the odds are in this case, compared to pure chance (41%)?

This might have been true when dealing was by hand, but surely this is unsound if hands are truly random?

[pescetom]

Tramticket, on 2018-December-18, 09:19, said:

This might have been true when dealing was by hand, but surely this is unsound if hands are truly random?

I find it hard to believe and do not currently take it into consideration, that's why I asked. If it was a real phenomenon induced by manual dealing, then I should have considered it here, as the tournament was dealt by hand.

I found this pertinent article by Ana Roth which describes a "Law of Symmetry" by Culbertson, with a nine-sometimes example complete with vigorous natural bidding. His "Law" (why does bridge induce abuse of this term?) basically states that the pattern of suits in an unbalanced hand will be reflected in the pattern of one suit over all four players. FWIW, that actually works in my example, with clubs split 6322 like North This isn't the same as saying that both sides short suits are likely to split the same way, but that may be a corollary.

Ana Roth too implies that any credibility might be linked to hand dealing. Looking at what Culbertson says, it seems to me at first thought more like mere coincidence at work, given that there will usually be more than one suit of a given long length and that certain distributions are much more frequent than others (for example 6322 represents 34% of all hands containing a 6-card suit, so given N 6322 and two 6-card suits in the deal it is 57% that one suit is exactly 6322 between all four players).