[Walddk]

It has been a while since we had a suit combination to tackle. This one came up in a live IMP game last night:

AK93

J62

Plenty of entries to both hands. How do you play when you need 3 tricks, and how good a chance is it "a priori" (everything being equal)?

Roland

[cherdano]

Walddk, on Mar 3 2005, 07:46 PM, said:

AK93

B62

This is just a guess, but one I would bet a coke on: Cash the Ace, try leading low to the Bube. If it loses, cash the king and hope the 10 drops. This is all assuming noone shows out earlier, of course.
It only loses to Qxx or QTxx on the left; I am too lazy to calculate the odds, but they should be around 80%.

Arend

[Free]

Yes, A followed by small to the J. I just wonder if it's better to finesse or cash the K in the 3rd round...

[cherdano]

Free, on Mar 3 2005, 08:13 PM, said:

Yes, A followed by small to the J. I just wonder if it's better to finesse or cash the K in the 3rd round...

That one is easy. 10 free places on the left, 11 on the right, after you lead last card towards K9 and LHO follows. (Yes I know the free-places stuff does not always apply, but here I am confident it does.)

Arend

[Walddk]

cherdano, on Mar 3 2005, 03:11 PM, said:

... try leading low to the Bube.

B is actually short for "Bonde" in Danish. "Peasant" or "Farmer". Should have been Jack of course and is now corrected in my initial post. My apologies.

Roland

[hrothgar]

Ace and low to the Jack is correct. I believe that you should cash the King on round 2 if you see the 10...

[HeartA]

Cash an honor, that's for sure. If 10 or Q drops, we have 3 tricks already. Assume both sides follow low. Now playing 3 from North gets you 3 tricks when either side got Tx (East couldn't fool you by playing T from QT), or East has Q(T)xx, or West has QTx, or East has Qx, or East has singleton (West has QTxxx). It loses only when West got Qx in which case to cash AK wins. When West got Qxx (and East Txx), or QTxx, it is a guess to play drop or finesse after J loses to Q.

In summary, to Cash A/K and play small toward J is the winning (percentage) play.

[cherdano]

Walddk, on Mar 3 2005, 08:24 PM, said:

cherdano, on Mar 3 2005, 03:11 PM, said:

... try leading low to the Bube.

B is actually short for "Bonde" in Danish. "Peasant" or "Farmer". Should have been Jack of course and is now corrected in my initial post. My apologies.

No problem. I decided to pretend it was German ("Bube" is a little old fashioned for "boy", btw.)

Arend

[luis]

Free, on Mar 3 2005, 08:13 PM, said:

Yes, A followed by small to the J. I just wonder if it's better to finesse or cash the K in the 3rd round...

Agree with this
and I think it's better to cash the King in the third round.
But if East has an honest count record and he has signaled a doubleton with 2 small then it may be better to finesse. As usual I think the pure odds say play the K but at the table you will play the K sometimes and finesse the 9 when you think is right.
The odds can't prevent you from doing the right thing....

[Walddk]

Well done everyone. Cash a top honour and lead low towards the jack. If it loses to the queen, you should go for the drop on the 3rd round. But it's only marginally better than finessing the 9.

The combination is actually in the Encyclopedia I now see. The chance of getting 3 tricks is about 84%, and the combination yields 2,88 tricks on average!

Roland

[Brandal]

Walddk, on Mar 3 2005, 06:23 PM, said:

Well done everyone. Cash a top honour and lead low towards the jack. If it loses to the queen, you should go for the drop on the 3rd round. But it's only marginally better than finessing the 9.

The combination is actually in the Encyclopedia I now see. The chance of getting 3 tricks is about 84%, and the combination yields 2,88 tricks on average!

Roland

How does top notch players handle suits like this:

KTx---AJxx or KTxx---AJxx when having no "clue"
from opps bidding or lead helping them?

Do top notch players finesse the same way every time?

Being an average player and not too competitive I like
to "decide" there and then,sometimes one way,sometimes
the other way.

Is there a percentage there?

Sounds like doing it the same way every time has some merit.
Sounds like alternating 1/1 I might get it wrong or right 100%.

Judging from "experience" my way using my "feel" I get it right
around 50% or so.

[Rebound]

I take a cue from Las Vegas when it comes to percentage plays. They don't always pay off but they keep you in business.

[hrothgar]

Brandal, on Mar 4 2005, 03:26 PM, said:

How does top notch players handle suits like this:

KTx---AJxx or KTxx---AJxx when having no "clue"
from opps bidding or lead helping them?

Do top notch players finesse the same way every time?

You've already answered your own question. Absent additional information, it doesn't matter which way you take a two way finesse.

With this said and done, I can think of a small number of top players who had various "rules" that they enforced on their partners. Barry Crane was probably the most notorious...

I've always wondered whether Crane's success occurred as a result of these rules or despite them... I lean towards the latter.

[Brandal]

hrothgar, on Mar 4 2005, 08:23 AM, said:

Absent additional information, it doesn't matter which way you take a two way finesse.

yeah but.....

wouldn't the same way every time end up around
50% right in the long run?

And would guessing every time not be likely to
end up below 50% unless we're real lucky in
bridge and not lucky at all in love?

[luis]

Brandal, on Mar 4 2005, 12:26 PM, said:

Walddk, on Mar 3 2005, 06:23 PM, said:

Well done everyone. Cash a top honour and lead low towards the jack. If it loses to the queen, you should go for the drop on the 3rd round. But it's only marginally better than finessing the 9.

The combination is actually in the Encyclopedia I now see. The chance of getting 3 tricks is about 84%, and the combination yields 2,88 tricks on average!

Roland

How does top notch players handle suits like this:

KTx---AJxx or KTxx---AJxx when having no "clue"
from opps bidding or lead helping them?

Do top notch players finesse the same way every time?

Being an average player and not too competitive I like
to "decide" there and then,sometimes one way,sometimes
the other way.

Is there a percentage there?

Sounds like doing it the same way every time has some merit.
Sounds like alternating 1/1 I might get it wrong or right 100%.

Judging from "experience" my way using my "feel" I get it right
around 50% or so.

First of all I try to postpone the decision as much as I can, in a trump contract it's not often possible but in no trumps you can wait and collect information.
Then you must see if you have information about a player that could have opened or could have entered the bidding with the missing queen.
If that is not useful you should try to guess the distribution around the table and play for the Q in the player that has more chances to have lenght in the suit.
Finally if you can't do anything of the above try to see if a player is nervous or seems to have given up hope specially in front of AJxx.

[Brandal]

luis, on Mar 4 2005, 09:02 AM, said:

Finally if you can't do anything of the above try to see if a player is nervous or seems to have given up hope specially in front of AJxx.

Message both opps privately?

"Are you nervous now?"

I like the way you think Luis


(Silly reply but I'm anxious to reach 100 posts,
making all these redoubled games wear me out)

hehe

[hrothgar]

Brandal, on Mar 4 2005, 04:51 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 4 2005, 08:23 AM, said:

Absent additional information, it doesn't matter which way you take a two way finesse.

yeah but.....

wouldn't the same way every time end up around
50% right in the long run?

And would guessing every time not be likely to
end up below 50% unless we're real lucky in
bridge and not lucky at all in love?

For the moment, lets back awy from the example of the two way finesse. A Luis notes, you're almost always able to extract additional information about the hand so that you aren't faced with a 50-50 guess. Instead, lets consider flipping a "fair" coin.

- The odds of "heads" is precisely 50%
- The odds of Tails is precisely 50%

We're going to play a game in which I flip the coin 100 times. If you correctly guess which way the coin lands, I'll pay you 1 Euro. If you guess the result of the coin toss incorrectly, you pay me 1 Euro.

I repeat once again: It doesn't matter what you do.

You can always pick head...
You can always pick tails...
You can pick heads unless the coin turns up heads twice in a row in whcih case you switch to tails...
You can pick tails unless the coin turns up heads 10 times in a row...

Regardless of what you do or don't do, at the end of 100 coin tosses, you should expect to break even.

[Brandal]

Walddk, on Mar 3 2005, 02:46 PM, said:

It has been a while since we had a suit combination to tackle. This one came up in a live IMP game last night:

AK93

J62

Plenty of entries to both hands. How do you play when you need 3 tricks, and how good a chance is it "a priori" (everything being equal)?

Roland

Is it very bad to play the J first time and
if the Q wins behind,play to the 9 next time?

[bestguru]

You risk losing to a singleton Q or even worse losing to the Q and then losing to Tx.