[wanoff]

barmar, on 2014-February-26, 17:01, said:

You don't throw out bidding conventions just because they sometimes lead to bad contracts. You have to look at the overall frequency of gain vs. loss, as well as whether the bid could be used more effectively for something else.

I.e. if you get rid of splinters, do you have a better use for those double jumps?

They're not saying to get rid of splinters.
The advice is against forcing to game when the hand is only worth 3♠. Fairly sound advice.

[rhm]

Zelandakh, on 2014-February-27, 04:44, said:

What is your line? A perfectly natural way to play the diamonds is ♦T to the ace and then another back towards ♦Q98. If we can pick up the ♦J then we might not get a heart loser in the final reckoning. At B/I level this is a good game as the defenders will give the game away most of the time and not find the best defence.

Some people do not like double dummy simulations.
Rodwell does. So do I and I think I understand the limitations of simulations well.

Anyway If People do not like simulations they apparently object to Suitplay as well.
Suitplay claims that the given diamond combination will provide at least 3 tricks 69% of the time and Suitplay assumes I will have a pure guess about the location of opponents diamond honors.

Rainer Herrmann

[Endymion77]

Zelandakh, on 2014-February-27, 04:44, said:

What is your line? A perfectly natural way to play the diamonds is ♦T to the ace and then another back towards ♦Q98. If we can pick up the ♦J then we might not get a heart loser in the final reckoning. At B/I level this is a good game as the defenders will give the game away most of the time and not find the best defence.

The natural way to play diamonds is the double finesse

[gnasher]

I'd want to be in game with these two hands, especially given that the opponents didn't overcall. We might still make after losing two diamonds, if the queen of trumps is doubleton.

[jogs]

rhm, on 2014-February-27, 05:26, said:

Some people do not like double dummy simulations.
Rodwell does. So do I and I think I understand the limitations of simulations well.

I'm not against the use of double dummy simulations. It is a ball park figure. It isn't the final arbiter of all disputes.

[barmar]

jogs, on 2014-February-27, 10:32, said:

I'm not against the use of double dummy simulations. It is a ball park figure. It isn't the final arbiter of all disputes.

Sometimes DD will overstate declarer's tricks, because he always gets two-way finesse right, drops singletons, etc. But sometimes it will understate, because the defenders play perfectly as well, they never make bad opening leads like real players do. The theory is that these two factors cancel each other out, so the overall results approximate real play well enough.