[han]

Hand 8

All red, patton (mixture of matchpoints and IMPs).

x 109x KJxx 109xxx

The opponents bid 1S - 3S - 4S, 3S was invitational. What do you lead?

[hrothgar]

top club

[Phil]

♣10

Again, why would you use a format like Patton that is unfamiliar to many that would respond to this? At IMPs, I would make the aggressive diamond lead, and at MPs I would lead a high club. Since I doubt we are beating this (the hooks are working and there are no bad breaks), and this looks like the field contract, I’ll try to keep my matchpoint portion of the score and go with a high club.

[mike777]

I dont know Patton.

low d

very close second choice TC

[Echognome]

I lead my systematic (low) club. I have no strong convictions.

[whereagles]

Ten of ♥. Now, this one I'm SURE is the same I sent han

Now seriously, judgement is depends on your mood... it's normal to bid differently in different days and this great set required a lot of judgement. Hats off to han for doing this poll.

[Fluffy]

lowest club

Looks like opponents will have little problems making this, and nothing in the bidding suggests we are in a hurry. I lead low club cos I hate leading the 10 when dummy has KJ8 and partner the queen.

[Free]

I've never played patton and I also don't know what kind of tactics one should use with this scoring. Anyone wants to share?

I choose ♥T. It looks like partner has some trumps. I don't like a ♣ lead because I don't want to give partner a ruff. I don't want to lead an agressive ♦ because I don't know patton tactics but I suspect it's too risky. So I'll lead a passive ♥T.

[Fluffy]

This hand is just like a MPs tournament, if some of the field is at 2/3♠ and a large part of the field is at 4♠. It will be important to hold 4♠ to the less overtricks to compete with the opponents at 4♠, but putting it down earns you a very big score.

[P_Marlowe]

Diamond.

Given that we play Patton, that one I overlooked, it makes sense trying to go safe
with a club or a heart lead, but most likely I still go with a diamond, maybe because
I have no idea, what suit to choose, when I try to go safe.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[han]

Hand 8

All red, patton (mixture of matchpoints and IMPs).

x 109x KJxx 109xxx

The opponents bid 1S - 3S - 4S, 3S was invitational. What do you lead?

Justin: low diamond
Fred: low club
Nigel: low diamond
Paul: club 10
Frances: a heart.
Roger: low diamond
Gonzalo: low club.
Hanoi: club 10
Vincent: club 10
Andy: club 10
Josh: low diamond
Michael: low diamond
Ben: low club
Adam: heart 10.

At Matchpoints most would lead a club, and at IMPs most would lead a diamond. To hear about all of this without making it another two-part question I decided to use Patton scoring. After searching hard for good problems this is just the kind of comment you want to hear:

Ben: A small club. Never the singleton trump. I could argue for a heart, diamond or club. I am going passive here. If west had shown hearts, I would have start a small diamond, but I am not so afraid of a passive defense on this hand.

Justin: A diamond at imps and a club at MP! I have no idea in Patton since I've never played it, I guess a diamond.
Justin also told me how much he hated me for making it Patton. It made it too difficult.

Fred: Low club. I certainly want to go passive in terms of the matchpoint element of the scoring and passive could easily be the winner as far as IMPs are concerned as well, especially since trumps are not breaking and because nowadays people don't need much of an excuse to stretch to bid games. Leading the 10 of clubs is also OK, but I do feel pretty strongly that clubs is the right suit to lead. You would have to put a gun to my head in order to get me to lead another suit, but hearts would be my (distant) second choice.

Nigel: Low diamond. I tend to lead aggressively. I haven’t played this kind of scoring before but my best guess is that the matchpoint upside of going passive is less than the IMP upside of leading aggressively.

Paul: At matchpoints I'd lead the ten of clubs. At imps I'd probably lead a small diamond. At patton, this looks like a game that they will make so I will fall back to the safest lead.

If everybody agrees that a diamond is the aggressive lead and a club is the passive lead, then how about hearts?

Adam: Heart 10. There is nothing about this auction that suggests an aggressive lead, and especially with a MP component to the scoring I will go passive. I generally prefer to lead from short bad suits rather than long bad suits, on the theory that one opponent is likely to be short in my long suit (so it's hard to establish tricks there).

Frances: Well, it's a mixture of passive and aggressive scoring so I'll lead a heart, which is halfway between a passive club and a super-aggressive diamond.

I think you have the order of the suits wrong? The rest of the panel leads either clubs or diamonds. I like this argument best:

Roger: Low diamond, I like to be passive against this auction normally, but we have so little that we can reasonably hope to hit partner with a diamond honor.

Gonzalo: Looks like opponents will have little problems making this, and nothing in the bidding suggests we are in a hurry. I lead low club because I hate leading the 10 when dummy has KJ8 and partner the queen.

Justin also thinks that a low club is better than the 10.

Hanoi: I lead the ♣10. Opponent's methods don't seem 'common' but I couldn't think of an inference to draw from this. I just hope it wasn't 1♠-(Pa)-3♦-(X) at the other table.

Perhaps this auction would be more common in the US. I actually picked it up on a Dutch forum. Vincent posted there about this hand but doesn't seem to recognize it.

Vincent: Club 10. More passive than the HT.

Andy: Club 10. A case could be made for any of the four suits. I often lead trumps against this sort of auction, but that's unattractive with a singleton. I lead a club because that's least likely to pick off anything in partner's hand, and may lead to a ruff.

Josh: I'll try a diamond. There are no guarantees but I don't see any reason to think this is likely to go down if I'm passive so I'll make my one contribution to the defense.

Michael: Small diamond. I like aggressive leads. A passive heart or club will often run into a cashout layout with a source of tricks in dummy.

In practice the contract is immediately down after a diamond lead, and after a club lead partner can shift to diamonds to set the contract. A heart lead lets it make.

Scores:

Low club = 100 (4)
Club 10 = 90 (3)
Low diamond = 80 (5)
Heart 10 = 50 (2)

For most of the panel the choice was between clubs and diamonds. As clubs was the most popular suit, I gave both club leads more points than a diamond lead.

[han]

Wait, that was hand 8, which means I'm done, phew!

I think I learned a great deal from reading and thinking about the answers of the panel, so I'd like to thank them all for their many thoughtful comments. I'd also like to thank Roger, Arend, Justin and Csaba for discussing the hands with me when I was still tinkering. In retrospect I would have done some things differently but I'm really happy with the different opinions that the hands generated.

I guess now it is time to compute the scores. I know this is part of the game but I hope people won't take this too seriously. The panelists won't be eligible to win. First of all, their own answers determine the scores so it wouldn't be fair. Second, it is not their job to score points, it is their job to make original and insightful comments, and they succeeded in doing so.

I hope I will get to do this again some time but not too soon.

[JLOGIC]

Before hands were sent out:

Me: horrible problem, diamond at imps clubs at MP, both auto.

I assumed the hand would be scratched. Then the hand is sent out...

Patton! F.U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[paulg]

JLOGIC, on 2011-June-03, 04:16, said:

Before hands were sent out:

Me: horrible problem, diamond at imps clubs at MP, both auto.

I assumed the hand would be scratched. Then the hand is sent out...

Patton! F.U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Another ZT for your collection?

[karlson]

I do think the question of which suit to lead if we're leading passively is interesting. Fred among others feels very strongly that a club is better than a heart, but Adam's argument makes a lot of sense. I'm sure that if our goal is to set up slow tricks on average we will do better in hearts than in clubs. A defensive club ruff seems pretty far-fetched on this hand. It seems that the actual hand is kind of random -- sounds like partner had the club ace, so he could switch to diamonds whereas if he had had the heart ace we would need to lead a heart (or a diamond). But it's not quite that way -- they're likely to be able to cash fewer fast clubs than hearts, so if partner has the heart ace we're more likely to survive a club lead than vice versa.

I suppose all of this is just trying to put in more words Frances's idea of a heart as the "in-between" lead. But suppose it's just matchpoint scoring -- I assume Adam would still lead a heart. Is this so crazy?

Maybe it's a good hand for a double dummy simulation, I don't know. (sure, hearts more likely to solve a guess, but it doesn't seem like a huge margin)

[cherdano]

But club tricks are more likely to go away than heart tricks.

Btw, I really dislike the ♣10 lead compared to the low club lead. Leading the 10 is of course necessary double dummy in some layouts, but in practice it often won't be (declarer putting up the ♣J from dummy's J8x when he doesn't have the queen, etc). OTOH, giving partner accurate count may be important to get him to switch to diamonds in time.

[Phil]

In spite of my bitching, I thought this was a great job by Han.

To me, one of the aspects of a good bridge problem is that there are several reasonable choices, so most of the problems were pretty interesting.

However, I would like to suggest a few things and hopefully they are taken in a constructive tone:

- I would like to see the panel made up of truly world class players, and not just players from a lot of different countries. There's nothing sacred about having our regular posters on the panel as far as I can tell. If the moderator needs some help, have him/her reach out to other posters and I am sure that we can come up with a panel that is great.

- I also think that the poll contest should be something that could be advertised on BBO. Rain, do you think BBO can afford some BBO$ for the winners of future contests??

- Score the problems based on the overall tone of the panel. This is how MSC does it. It seemed the scoring followed the votes very closely, and while that won't anger anyone (hey, my pass got a 60, but 40% of the panel voted for it????), I don't think thats a proper way to moderate.

- We have had this sub-forum for, um, how many years? I would like to see a quarterly edition of this. I would be happy to help out with screening, tabulating, emailing, compiling, moderating; whatever we need to keep this running.

[awm]

Yes, I would lead a heart at matchpoints too.

My view on this is that I really don't want to be leading a suit which is singleton in declarer or dummy on this hand. The problem is that if the opponents have some values opposite that singleton (say KQx opposite stiff), this in principle is a bad fit and we may be able to set them. However, if I go and lead that suit I will help them establish these honors to discard away losers from another suit. In a suit where one of their hands has singleton, the only trick we are likely to get is the ace. Sure, that ace might go away, but pitching your singleton often requires pulling trump first (unless you have a pretty freak shape). So for our ace to go away in their singleton suit, they need to be able to pull trumps with no losers and also to have some side suit that establishes with no losers. Yeah that's possible but I wouldn't bet heavily on it. I guess I'm saying that I disagree with Cherdano about which tricks are most likely to go away.

Perhaps another way to put it is that I'm not trying so much to "grab our aces before they go away." I'm not that afraid of aces that go away. I'm more concerned that we have a slow trick somewhere (like second or third round of a suit) and this trick is going away. Such a trick is much more likely to be in hearts, because we have so many clubs (and they are so bad). It is true that diamonds are the most likely place to find a trick, but diamonds are also the most likely lead to give a trick if they have both ace and queen. Leading a heart might drop a tempo (and apparently on the actual hand that costs), but it's quite unlikely to actually give a trick and I don't see any reason that one round suit is more likely to give a tempo than the other. What happened on the actual hand (partner apparently has ♣A+♦A and we need to cash) is certainly possible, but I don't see it as any more likely than partner holding the red aces (in which case club is bad and heart is fine), or as being more likely than the many layouts where a diamond lead just blows a trick.

[han]

Phil, on 2011-June-03, 09:27, said:

- I would like to see the panel made up of truly world class players, and not just players from a lot of different countries. There's nothing sacred about having our regular posters on the panel as far as I can tell. If the moderator needs some help, have him/her reach out to other posters and I am sure that we can come up with a panel that is great.

I see this more as a forum activity. If we only had world class players on the panel that would mean there would be only a few forum regulars. Yes, it is true that the level difference between various posters was very large this time, but I don't see this as a problem. In fact, I thought it was interesting to see the differences between various panelists.

Of course, a world-class-only poll would also be interesting, but I think that the poll would need a world class moderator as well so I wouldn't do it.

Quote

- I also think that the poll contest should be something that could be advertised on BBO. Rain, do you think BBO can afford some BBO$ for the winners of future contests??

For me making it bigger wouldn't make it better. The more serious the scoring gets taken (and the more people complain about the scores), the less fun it would be for me.

Quote

- Score the problems based on the overall tone of the panel. This is how MSC does it. It seemed the scoring followed the votes very closely, and while that won't anger anyone (hey, my pass got a 60, but 40% of the panel voted for it????), I don't think thats a proper way to moderate.

I did try to score the problems based on the overall tone of the panel. Again, if you think I didn't do it properly, go do it yourself. To be honest I care much more about the bridge discussion than about the scores.

[benlessard]

low D, no comments.

Low club is a close 2nd