Bridge Problem

[beth_leonard]

I don't know if anyone who reads my journal likes bridge, but here is my current bridge quiz -- is it possible to make 4S on this hand?
Bidding - opponents silent, partner opens: 1C - 1S - 3S - P

Dummy:
S: AKQ8
H: xxx
D: Kx
C: Jxxx

Me:
S: T9xx
H: AKx
D: xxxx
C: AQ

Opening lead, small diamond.

Ok declarer, what's your plan?


As it turns out, the Diamond Ace is to the right, club K on the left, and the spades break 4-1 to with 4 on the left with the jack. We went down 1 (making 2) but after the night was over I think I see how to have made 3 (with one very weak assumption that I can't test anymore because I don't remember *all* of the opponents cards.) I don't know if there's any way to make four, and it seems like I was correct to not bid it in this case.

--Beth
--Beth

Comments

[ashke.livejournal.com]

Just thinking out loud here...

With the first hand, do you try to take the diamond trick with the K or does some other diamond take it? (i know you said that the Ace was on your right, which isn't good..but I'm assuming it was taken since you played the K right away?)

Once you discover the bad split, you might want to get rid of the second diamond on the board (if it is not gone already) and cross ref two of your diamonds to the trump?

How I see it is that you could either loose or win one diamond trick with the K. Then maybe win up to 2 tricks in clubs (try to loose the K of clubs trick early in order to make your Ace or Q/J good)(were the other clubs somewhat high or not?) (cross ref your clubs and diamonds once board is cleared with the Diamonds and your hand cleared of clubs). Two tricks in hearts (so that's about 5 tricks (but this is assuming a lot)). The cross ref may give you about 2 more tricks after pulling two rounds of trump. So that would be 9 tricks. If the cross ref is really good, you may get up to 4 tricks, which would mean 11 tricks. But I somewhat doubt it.

You might be able to get another trick by constantly finessing the J of spades from your hand to your partner's hand. you do have four chances, which would mean that you could win all of them and NOT loose the J of trump trick. It would mean that you would burn all of your trump thou. So if this is the case then it would be:
4 trump tricks.
2 gauranteed H tricks
you could/may have 3 club tricks by leading a low club (once trump is pulled) and play your Q, which will either take a trick or the K will play it. then it would make your Ace and Jack good. If one of other clubs is high enough, it may take a trick, especially if the opponent's player that had to do 3 discards with trump gives up their clubs (due to it's long suit). this is of course a lot of ifs. (so if it gets played correctly, it may take 3...definitely 2 thou).
1 diamond trick (maybe)

so that is a total of 9 or vaguely 10 tricks. I don't know if you do better cross ref or straight pulling since I'm not sure what the disturbution was on the opponents hand that had all of the spades. the bad split was definitely not in your favor.

like as i said, a lot of this was me thinking out loud. i'm not sure how much of it makes sense. I hope some to most of it does. any questions or comments are fine. I'm always willing to discuss bridge with people. =)

[motleypolitico.livejournal.com]

Ok, doing a trick count:

You've got a spade loser, a heart loser, two diamond losers, and a club loser potentially. So that's 5 losers hanging out there, and you've got to reduce that to 3 losers.

Best way I see to go about this, involves biting the bullet on your club loser (cash AQ, making the J good, but *ruffing* the third round of clubs in hand). There are layouts where you can get yourself three club tricks (Kx onside) without the loser, but it doesn't much help as you have no winners to set up elsewhere. You'll eventually pitch a heart loser on the club J. So now we're down to only having one more loser to get rid of. And I don't see a way that you can toss RHO (with the diamond ace) in, so he has to either lead away from the diamond ace or concede a ruff/sluff. So I don't see how to avoid the second diamond loser, although if RHO doesn't have the Queen, and you do it late enough, he may fly Ace and bail you out if you can get LHO to break diamonds for you. If you can hold yourself to a single diamond loser through poor defense that way, you also have chances to make, losing a diamond, a club, and a spade. LHO will ruff in with his Jack of spades at some point, but who cares, it was going to be good anyway.

If you were psychic and knew the 4:1 spade break was coming, you could hook finesse the T on the first or second round of spades when you pull them, but that's not the percentage play by any means, and I'm still not sure you can do that and get all the ruffs you need.

There may also be a way to make this on a dummy reversal, where you score up a total of 5 trump tricks (4 in dummy, one ruff in hand in clubs), 2 hearts, and 2 clubs and find a spare trick around somewhere, either on a ruff/sluff or by scoring the diamond King, but I'm not seeing it. I suppose there are also possibilities for a double squeeze as well, since you have both opps guarding hearts, one guarding diamonds, one guarding clubs, but I don't think it quite sets up nicely for you and it's hard to rectify the count with the bad spade break out there.

So, moral of the story, you needed the diamond Ace onside to make it an easy game, so you're at least a 50% game there, and you had chances even if that was off, if you could hold spades to zero losers, which happens on pretty much any 3:2 break. So it was a good game on a bad lay of the cards.

Not against best defense

[(Anonymous)]

On the opening lead, you're pretty much forced to play the KD and hope that LHO underled. Ducking will always lose you two diamond tricks.

Against best defence, you might be pretty stuck here. If you stick up the KD, Covered by the ace, opponents cash a second diamond and then lead a third diamond, forcing you to ruff in dummy. Now you can go AC, QC, losing the KC on your left. If LHO has a fourth diamond, he can force you to ruff with an honor in dummy, so let's assume that LHO only had 3 diamonds.

At this point, LHO can lead a trump, making it impossible to cross ruff the rest of the hand, after pitching your baby heart on the JC.

I think there are some defenses that would allow you to make, following the lines suggested below. How did the play to the first three tricks go? Assuming two diamonds made the first two tricks, what did the opponents lead at trick three?

MRC

Re: Not against best defense

[beth_leonard]

You're right, I ducked and afterwords decided I shouldn't have, but either way it didn't matter. The ace was on my right. They took 2 diamonds off the top and switched to a heart.

I don't remember exactly how it went, but after pulling 1 round of trump, I attacked clubs. Somewhere in there I ended up trumping a club in my hand and at that point I knew it was the 4-1 break with the jack on my left. I finessed the jack starting from my last trump in my hand, winning with the 8 on the board and using the queen to pull the jack. In order to make 3 I should have cross-ruffed diamonds/clubs and just lost the jack at the end. Riskier if he was out of clubs and overruffed, but it at least had the potential to make the contract as opposed to going down by using two of my trumps to pull his one. (They had the higher clubs and there was no way to establish the 4th club as mine.)

--Beth

Re: Not against best defense

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, so after the heart continuation, you might be able to make it. Win it, take the ace of clubs, then lead the Q of clubs. If they continue hearts, win it, then you have:

AKQ8
x
-
Jx



T9xx
x
xx
-

You're in your hand. Ruff a diamond low, then the AK of spades. Then lead the JC, pitching your last heart and praying that it holds. If the JC holds, hope that the person with the JS also had four clubs, and ruff the last club in hand, and you've got a high trump left in dummy.

If the person with the JS has 3 or fewer clubs, I think you must go down. I think.

This same line works if they attack trumps, or lead another diamond at this point. The key difference between attacking diamonds now versus earlier is that they haven't tapped you yet.

I think.


MRC

Re: Not against best defense

[beth_leonard]

So at the very end where it looks like this:

..Q8
x..
..
....

T...
...
xx
..

And I'm in my hand, I lead the T of trumps and if he plays the jack I play the Queen, and if not, the 8.  Followed by the other trump then losing the last trick, for making 4.

Wow,  This is why I need to look at these things in detail afterwords.  I never would have thought of losing the Club Queen on purpose and not trying a finess, but at least this line of play has the possibility of making 4.

For me, my worst play comes when I'm trying to manage a 4-4 trump split.  When the opponents break 4-1 it gets really ugly.  Even when I count up the losers and I think I'll make the contract, if some of my cards are not losers because it's a short suit, I don't know how to form a line of play that *uses* trumps to cover the short suit, but doesn't *use up* the trumps, making some other winner a loser to opponents trump.

That was my problem when I was playing this hand.  We were in 3.  I counted 4 losers but ended up losing 5 because I pulled trump instead of ruffing.
--Beth

--Beth