[matmat]

Scoring: XIMP

(3♥)-P-(P)-3NT;
all pass
♥Q led.

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How do you play?
If you win the lead in dummy and lead a diamond toward your honors, you hold the trick.

high level opps.

[hanp]

Depends a bit on the opponents. Against good opponents I think it is quite unlikely that RHO has the diamond ace and LHO the club ace, RHO would have hopped up. On the other hand the aces might well be the other way around, or RHO could have both.

Playing a spade to the king to play another diamond seems a good attempt to go down in a colod contract. I think I would play a high diamond from hand.

Against bad opponents I would play a club to the queen.

[gnasher]

A high diamond from hand may also go down in a "cold" contract. Suppose RHO has four diamonds and ♣A: he can set up a two spade tricks before we get all of our minor-suit winners going. Against that sort of layout, best is probably to lead a top club now, but that risks going down when LHO has cunningly ducked with ♦A.

We might need to know more about their prempting style. Would xx QJ10xxxx x Jxx be a 3♥ opening?

[shyams]

The normal 3-2 split odds are ~68%. I tried the rpbridge.com calculator with the following conditions:
West has 6 unknown cards to East's 11 (♥ split 7-2) + Both hands have 1+ ♦. The odds of a 3-2 break are 72%.

Adjusting it for illogical choices (♦ singleton not an Ace) and expert errors (East highly unlikely to duck with ♦Ax), the revised odds of a 3-2 break are still around 67%.

The odds suggest a diamond continuation.

[gnasher]

shyams, on Aug 23 2010, 10:27 AM, said:

The normal 3-2 split odds are ~68%. I tried the rpbridge.com calculator with the following conditions:
West has 6 unknown cards to East's 11 (♥ split 7-2) + Both hands have 1+ ♦. The odds of a 3-2 break are 72%.

Did you mean 62%? When I used Pavlicek's calculator with a vacant-space ratio of 6:11, I got
  3=2/2=3: 57.8
  4=1: 32.0
  1=4: 2.7

  57.8/(57.8+32+2.7) ~= 62%

Quote

Adjusting it for illogical choices (♦ singleton not an Ace) and expert errors (East highly unlikely to duck with ♦Ax), the revised odds of a 3-2 break are still around 67%.

If I exclude the singleton aces, I get
  57.8/(57.8+4/5*32+4/5*2.7) ~= 68%
but that's not taking account of the fact that we "know" that if RHO has ♦A he also has ♣A.

Also, the actual chance of a diamond break depends on West's preemptive style. Some players would be disinclined to preempt with 2722; others would be unconcerned by this.

Quote

The odds suggest a diamond continuation.

A priori, if hearts are 7=2, the chance of finding ♦A on the right is 11/(11+6) ~= 65%.

Again, the actual odds are also dependent on West's preempting style - some players would almost deny a side ace - and what we think he would lead if he had no entry. We also have to consider what we think we can achieve by playing clubs next - even with both aces on the right, it doesn't guarantee the contract.

I wasn't particularly arguing against a diamond continuation, but only saying that there's more than one way to end up looking foolish on this deal.

[shyams]

gnasher, your calculations are obviously correct with the parameters you state. The difference in our %s is that I also used "Min length in this suit = 1:1" in my calcs. Edit Plus I think I made a mistake because I cannot replicate my %s

The OP reads "If you win the lead in dummy and lead a diamond toward your honors, you hold the trick". I assumed it as "odds to play trick 3".

gnasher, on Aug 23 2010, 01:28 PM, said:

I wasn't particularly arguing against a diamond continuation, but only saying that there's more than one way to end up looking foolish on this deal.

Agree with this. My only point was that if I play diamonds and it went all wrong, I could claim I had good enough (if not the best) odds for this line.

This post has been edited by shyams: 2010-August-23, 07:46

[pooltuna]

my initial inclination is to play a second ♦ reasoning that you have choosen the right suit to attack first and LHO has ducked the ♦A,his entry suit for ♥, hoping you will switch. The possible problem with leading a ♠ to win in dummy is that if RHO has both Aces and now attacks ♠ or if LHO wins the second ♦ lead and switches to a second ♠ lead. So you need to hope for 32♦ with LHO holding the A

[andrei]

isn't it better to win the lead in dummy and play a small club to the king?

it might be dificult for RHO to rise with A of clubs, when this might give the contract right away on some layouts.

if K wins, play on ♦.