[patroclo]

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East start with 7 of h

[Lord Molyb]

AQ of hearts, diamond to the queen (west must win), win any return, cash all your hearts, and finesse against the ♦T?

[Cyberyeti]

Lord Molyb, on 2014-April-02, 04:33, said:

AQ of hearts, diamond to the queen (west must win), win any return, cash all your hearts, and finesse against the ♦T?

I think the start is right, but you may not need to commit that early, say W returns a club, win, cash ♦AJ♠A, cross to the spade and run the hearts leaving:

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now the heart forces W to pitch a club, N pitches a diamond and E is squeezed in the blacks.

[helene_t]

Yes it is better to finesse than to play for ♦10 to drop. If East started with ♦10xxx you can't make it anyway. Besides, when hearts split 2-4, West has one more slot for ♦10 than East has.

[WellSpyder]

helene_t, on 2014-April-02, 07:39, said:

Yes it is better to finesse than to play for ♦10 to drop. If East started with ♦10xxx you can't make it anyway. Besides, when hearts split 2-4, West has one more slot for ♦10 than East has.

Can't East have ♦10xx?

You also may struggle to know who has 4 hearts and who has 2 if West returns an immediate diamond after winning K.

[helene_t]

WellSpyder, on 2014-April-02, 09:00, said:

Can't East have ♦10xx?

Sure. But East having Tx or Txx is a smaller chance than East having x, xx or xxx.

[WellSpyder]

helene_t, on 2014-April-02, 09:24, said:

Sure. But East having Tx or Txx is a smaller chance than East having x, xx or xxx.

Agreed. But if you finesse when East has one of the former holdings you are down immediately, while if you play for the drop when East has one of the latter holdings you may still make it on a squeeze, as demonstrated by Cyberyeti, for example, above. Too complicated for me to work out the odds.....

[gszes]

The squeeze approach is definitely better than the straight finesse
approach because it may be possible to cater to any makeable distribution
(with some cooperative defense anyway).

trick 1 heart A
trick 2 dia toward Q (loses) now hope they do not return a dia because then
you have mostly guesswork sooooooooooo lets assume they try any other suit
trick 3 win in dummy no matter the return (lets say a club for now)
we have rectified the count for a squeeze (we now have 11 winners and have lost one)
trick 4 heart Q
trick 5 another top club
trick 6 top spade
trick 7 spade to hand
trick 8 top heart (we are keeping 3 dia in dummy)
trick 9 top heart
trick 10 last heart reducing us to
void void AJ9 void
T void x 7

It isn't much to hang ones hat on but this end position works whenever either opps
started with 4+ dia (or Tx<x> and the spade QJ 4+ dia (or Tx<x>) and 5+ clubs (if
one of your black cards is now good the hand is over).

If the hand does not look like a squeeze you can fall back on the dia finesse or try
playing dia from the top hoping Tx or Txx was the starting point. This lop gives you
a chance any time the hand is makeable though it may take some guess work at the end
as to which position to play for it will probably be very helpful if lho has to pitch
a small dia (with only 2 or 3 small left after trick 1) if they have to hold a card
like the spade Q in the end position. GOOD LUCK

The point of playing for the squeeze like this is that you can always take the finesse
later on in the hand (cyberyeti) if it seems like a good idea but give yourself extra
chances when they are available who knows when it is finally your turn to be lucky.

[Cyberyeti]

gszes, on 2014-April-02, 14:11, said:

The squeeze approach is definitely better than the straight finesse
approach because it may be possible to cater to any makeable distribution
(with some cooperative defense anyway).

trick 1 heart A
trick 2 dia toward Q (loses) now hope they do not return a dia because then
you have mostly guesswork sooooooooooo lets assume they try any other suit
trick 3 win in dummy no matter the return (lets say a club for now)
we have rectified the count for a squeeze (we now have 11 winners and have lost one)
trick 4 heart Q
trick 5 another top club
trick 6 top spade
trick 7 spade to hand
trick 8 top heart (we are keeping 3 dia in dummy)
trick 9 top heart
trick 10 last heart reducing us to
void void AJ9 void
T void x 7

It isn't much to hang ones hat on but this end position works whenever either opps
started with 4+ dia (or Tx<x> and the spade QJ 4+ dia (or Tx<x>) and 5+ clubs (if
one of your black cards is now good the hand is over).

If the hand does not look like a squeeze you can fall back on the dia finesse or try
playing dia from the top hoping Tx or Txx was the starting point. This lop gives you
a chance any time the hand is makeable though it may take some guess work at the end
as to which position to play for it will probably be very helpful if lho has to pitch
a small dia (with only 2 or 3 small left after trick 1) if they have to hold a card
like the spade Q in the end position. GOOD LUCK

The point of playing for the squeeze like this is that you can always take the finesse
later on in the hand (cyberyeti) if it seems like a good idea but give yourself extra
chances when they are available who knows when it is finally your turn to be lucky.

So you have a horrid guess if E can come down to ♠Q ♦10 or small ♣Q with W holding ♦ 10xx or xxx and potentially go 3 off if you hook

[PhilKing]

Forget squeezes with phantom menaces and a misdefence - concentrate on not mangling the diamonds.

Unblock the second heart, cross to a spade and cash hearts (throwing one of each). Now run the diamond queen. You make it 100% of the time the king is onside plus any time the ten drops. The same cannot be said of a diamond to the queen unless we can see all four hands. And this line maximises the chances of a misdefence if they do not know North's distribution.

And a note to OP - the auction matters. If North has never mentioned diamonds, it may affect whether we go for a genuine or psychological line, since a player with ♦Txxx may be pseudo squeezed.

[Lord Molyb]

Oh… I thought this was a double dummy problem since all four hands were presented.

I play as gszes does single dummy.

[razorsharp]

There is a compound squeeze chance to take advantage of your ST in the endgame, which works! after D to Q loses & rectifies count.
But King has it right - unmangle D after HA-Q, S to K, HHH now DQ is my favorite Line - 'o - DEATH!

[Cyberyeti]

razorsharp, on 2014-April-03, 08:19, said:

There is a compound squeeze chance to take advantage of your ST in the endgame, which works! after D to Q loses & rectifies count.
But King has it right - unmangle D after HA-Q, S to K, HHH now DQ is my favorite Line - 'o - DEATH!

His line is clearly best, it just has some horrible things it loses to (♠QJ double with the diamonds Kx or K10xx offside for example).

[Lovera]

The situation in spade must be thinked like a duble threat (with honors divided between opp like Q in E and J in W) . So standing thinps we have two double threats and one oriented favoureble (in the upper hand ) in diamond . Then in clubs we have an threat called alternate ( club 3 in N and club 5 in S) : this is infact a compound squeeze with alternate threat.(Lovera)

[phil_20686]

helene_t, on 2014-April-02, 07:39, said:

Yes it is better to finesse than to play for ♦10 to drop. If East started with ♦10xxx you can't make it anyway. Besides, when hearts split 2-4, West has one more slot for ♦10 than East has.

That is true if you can finesse on the third round, not sure that its true on if you have to finesse on the second round. Tx with rho is pretty huge. cashing makes any 3-3 and 1/3 of 4-2 basically. But the finesse is > 50% since the knowledge that west has the K makes him more likely to hold length in diamonds.


However, it looks clear to cash here because there are reasonable odds on the squeeze anytime west has T to length in diamonds.


So I would cash the heart AQ, then diamond to the Q. win the return. Cash the diamonds once club and the spades ending in south and cash the hearts pitching a spade, then two diamonds. Any time rho has five spades or the QJ of spades, and lho has the diamonds, you can double squeeze and score teh last club. Otherwise you can still hope for a single squeeze in clubs and spades if the diamonds are on your right, but in that case the finesse wasnt working anyway.

[Lovera]

The situation of the spades of West 9 7 3 is equivalent at J 7 3 with West discarding spade 3.