My hand: ♠ J 5 2 ♥ 9 6 3 2 ♦ J 8 6 3 ♣ 9 6
East opens 1NT. I have another flat hand so I pass. West bids 2NT. East accepts and bids 3NT. I lead the 2 of hearts.
WEST ♠ 8 6 3 ♥ A T 8 ♦ 9 7 4 ♣ A J 7 5 | |||
| SOUTH ♠ J 5 2 ♥ 9 6 3 2 ♦ J 8 6 3 ♣ 9 6 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1NT | Pass | ||
| 2NT | Pass | 3NT | All Pass |
2-8-J-K. Partner has 12, maybe 13 points and just played 1 of them. Declarer won in hand and returns the 2 of clubs. 2-9-J-8. And another club. 5-4-Q-6. And a third. I need to find a pitch. I don't think my hearts are actually going to come home, so I pitch the 3. 3-3 of hearts-7-7 of hearts. So, declarer has 5 clubs. He plays another. A-4 of hearts-T-6 of hearts. He switches back to hearts and partner shows out. T-2 of diamonds-Q-9.
Declarer has 3 hearts and 5 clubs, so he's either 2-3-3-5 or 3-3-2-5. That makes partner either 5-3-3-2 or 4-3-4-2. Partner should have 11 or 12 points left in spades and diamonds. I don't need my 4th diamond, so I will pitch it next. Declarer cashes a club. K-3 of dimaonds-3 of spades-T of diamonds. He cashes a heart. 5-6 of diamonds-A-Q of diamonds.
Dummy plays a diamond. 4-A-5-8. Partner shifts to a spade. 9-4-5-6. He cashes another. A-7-2-8. He then has to lead to declarer. Q-K-J-7 of diamonds. Declarer has the K of diamonds as well. Making 4.
| NORTH ♠ A Q T 9 ♥ J 7 4 ♦ A Q T 2 ♣ 8 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ 8 6 3 ♥ A T 8 ♦ 9 7 4 ♣ A J 7 5 | EAST ♠ K 7 4 ♥ K Q 5 ♦ K 5 ♣ K Q T 3 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ J 5 2 ♥ 9 6 3 2 ♦ J 8 6 3 ♣ 9 6 |
On the replay we lose badly. East doesn't accept the invitation and they only play 2NT. A 16 count with a 5 card suit and he doesn't accept? What? My seat leads a heart again. He also pitches a diamond and not a spade... Defense throws away a trick but then endplays declarer to get it back, making 4.
I believe this happened solely because I told Sky in the comments earlier that EW always does the same thing on both tables. Screw you, Jack. Screw you. 8P
Nick: -430
Jack: -180
IMPs: -6 (-12 total)
9 comments:
Given the lie of the cards (ie, both K's offside) there's no way to set... but I'd like to know why you picked a H to lead? Given no outside indication (and no outside entries) leading 4th best from 9xxx seems iffy? At least J8xx is a better suit for your parter to use?
Because it was a major and they skipped Stayman. I need massive help to set up either terrible suit so I'm trying to find partner's 4 card suit in the hopes I can set up a long trick in his hand. Jxxx is also potentially a stopper in their suit where 9xxx is useless.
West has at least 7 cards in the minors and at most 6 in the majors and East is balanced so partner rates to have a major I think. Both East and West had a minor, it just turned out they both had clubs.
J8xx is still only a stopper if your partner has something in the suit, which he'll use at the first opportunity. Your goal (with your hand) is to try to set up whatever you can in partner's hand. Your diamond suit being better seems to be a better choice.
In any case, I don't think that the slight possibility of lengthier diamonds (non-staymen/transfer bids) matters much. I'd expect flatter hands anyways, and automatically discounting your best suit seems like its a recipe for disaster.
The something he needs can be as little as two small. Jxxx opposite xx at least puts declarer to a guess.
I don't think it's very slight at all that partner will have longer hearts than diamonds. I don't think SAYC even has transfers to a minor, so it's entirely possible West has a long minor and no way to show it. If he had a long major he definitely would, and he'd search for a major fit with 4 in either one.
I don't know if it's the case here, but there are people who won't open 1NT with a 5 card major, but will with a 5 card minor. That swings things even more towards partner having major suit length, if he has any length at all.
More likely the hand is going to be flat all around in which case attacking diamonds is good if partner has most of the high diamonds AND 4 of them and bad if he doesn't. I don't have any entries so I can't expect to cash my long heart or my long diamond. I need to set up partner's long suit be it a 4-carder or a longer one. I think he's more likely to have a 4-card major and much more likely to have a 5+ card major.
They invited to get to game, so they don't have an abundance of power. They probably need to set up their long suit to get to 9 tricks. Leading a heart likely isn't going to give them anything. Leading a diamond very easily could.
But leading a H, even if your partner has 4 of them can easily cost you a trick if he has KQ or KJ... while leading into KQx of diamonds is still quite fantastic. I think the card values is more important here then the suit distribution (given a completely unknown distribution). You're giving up real cards in a suit for a tenuous 'advantage' in another. I know its the norm to think of making or not making, but even in imps, saving yourself an overtrick or two (by actually setting up your diamonds) is still a reasonable number of imps.
If partner has KQxx of hearts and I lead them then we're getting at worst one of the honours and the long heart. With KQx of diamonds we're getting two of them as well, since we can't reach my long diamond. KQx isn't good enough to 'set up' my long diamond since I have no entry at all.
Assume we can take a chance which will either set them or give them an overtrick. Assume the other table doesn't take that chance, so they score just in for -400. Then we can either score +50 or -430. We either gain 10 IMPs or lose 1. So we only have to be right a little over 9% of the time to make the risk worth it under these assumptions.
Of course, sometimes they're making +1 at the other table and we're risking just in vs +2. Then we're either going -1 IMP or +1 IMP and have to be right half the time for the risk to make sense.
The truth will be somewhere in the middle, and it's worth taking a chance when your chances are between 9% and 50%.
I'm not sure I'm even risking anything though in this case. I think a heart lead is more likely to take more tricks over a variety of deals than a diamond lead is.
But that's not the worst that can happen. It's quite possible you never get the long H because your hearts are so terrible, partner can't lead H out of his hand (or give up a trick). So when they cover pard's K with an Ace, they can fire back a H later to endplay your partner.
The issue isn't coming simply from "# of tricks" but also from play issues. Leading from H with 4 small cards has merit when the suits are equivalent, but less so when suits are very much different in strength.
Some of the other hands I thought that it was a little suspicious how Jack behaved in the two hands, as if he was trying to screw you. This time I really don't see what the alternative is. Accept game when you play them and decline it on the replay with the exact same auction?
Jack knows you are keeping score, and he is determined to win.
I decided to do some more investigating on that pass. I replayed the auction a whole bunch of times and it always passed 2NT at their table and bid 3NT at mine so it wasn't just a random thing. I tried showing all the hands, hiding them, bidding for south or letting Jack bid for south and it always worked out the same way.
The only thing that changed was what convention card the NS team was playing. I poked around a bit more by taking the SAYC card and changing natural overcalls to Cappelletti. Doing so caused them to bid 3NT.
So, apparently there was some negative inference drawn because my team didn't make a Cappelletti bid.
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