[lamford]

---

Intercities Online Teams. Lead ♣J

You have an uninformative auction, and West leads the jack of clubs which looks promising. Over to you. East will play the two on this, reverse count if anything.

[mikeh]

I've not seen a good player lead from Jx(x) on this auction: the Jack will destroy too many holdings, so I will trust that West has the club 10. If he lacks that card, I may end up looking very silly indeed.

Win in hand, cash the top heart, lest the stiff King be offside, then spade A, spade to dummy, heart up.

Now, if LHO has K10xx (or equivalent) in hearts, I am down, unless he has 4=4 reds...even if he ducks the second heart, he is under pressure when I run the blacks at him...we will have played 2 hearts, 3 spades, and 3 clubs, with a club left to cash, so a 5 card ending, in which he has to hold Kx Qxx (or the equivalent) and we have in hand void Qx Kxx with dummy void xx Ax A.

We cash the club Ace and pitch a heart. LHO has to keep his 3 diamonds, so also stiffs his heart: we exit the heart, with a diamond entry still in dummy. I'd love that if it happened.

Meanwhile, more prosaically, we have, assuming the club 10 is onside, 3 hearts, 3 spades, 4 clubs and 2 diamonds by this line, losing a potential overtrick if hearts behave with the K onside.

The alternative is to win in hand, cross in spades, unblocking the A, and hook the heart. Say it loses: back comes a club, and you're going to finesse anyway.

Say the heart hook wins...are you using your diamond entry to dummy to repeat the hook which, by the way, may be losing the second time. Although when you play a heart to the Queen, LHO may not be willing to duck with the King, since he doesn't know that you don't have merely AQx(x). Still, crossing again in diamonds to take the heart hook a second time only allows you to avoid the club hook when hearts are 3-2/2-3 with the King onside. Since I think that the club 10 onside is a virtual lock, compared to being able to play hearts for 4 tricks, I eschew that option and safety play the suit for 3 winners (while secretly hoping for the red suit squeeze on LHO...btw, if he wins the second heart and returns one, I translate the earlier squeeze into a Vienna coup variant:))

[lamford]

mikeh, on 2019-November-20, 16:31, said:

Win in hand, cash the top heart, lest the stiff King be offside, then spade A, spade to dummy, heart up.

I took the heart finesse and blew to singleton king and there was no squeeze. I was brooding over it for the rest of the match, and afterwards checked out your view that it was right to cash the ace. This gives up on Kxx or Kx onside and seemed a big price to pay, but I was interested that you thought the jack almost guaranteed the ten from a good player. I did a SIM of the opening lead from Jxxx Txx Jxxx Jx and the low heart and jack of clubs were joint winners, with the latter slightly ahead after 1000 hands, although beating it was under 20%. Jxxx fared badly, along with traditional wisdom perhaps. Think I would make the same play again, but was fascinated by your view on the hand.

[Stephen Tu]

Is there a downside to hooking the club at trick 2? If it wins safety play hearts, if it unexpectedly loses try the heart hook?

[nige1]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-November-21, 21:21, said:

Is there a downside to hooking the club at trick 2? If it wins safety play hearts, if it unexpectedly loses try the heart hook?

Even after profound perusal, I failed to find the winning play But Stephen Tu has cracked it again

[Stephen Tu]

Hmm on thinking a bit deeper there is a problem if RHO has HKT9x(x), due to the entry situation, you have to decide whether he is something like 5413 /4423/other long spades/short diamonds and need to strip squeeze him in the end game (and have to cash both high diamonds before doing so) or 3433/2443/similar (and better not cash both diamonds).
But OK if LHO has stiff K/T/9.

So I guess it depends on how strong you think the CT with LHO inference is vs your ability to divine the distribution?

[mikeh]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-November-21, 21:21, said:

Is there a downside to hooking the club at trick 2? If it wins safety play hearts, if it unexpectedly loses try the heart hook?

I think there is a downside, and one that I think is more likely than that LHO has found an insane but lucky lead. If RHO has Kxxx in hearts, you can't score 4 heart tricks, absent a red suit squeeze, and you are down.

As for it being an insane lead, there may be auctions where Jx seems reasonable, but surely not 1N 4N 6N!

Responder has, probably, a balanced hand and no 4 card major, thus making 3 or 4 clubs in dummy very probable. The Jack works ONLY if partner has the 10...this includes (usually) H10xx, especially since declarer will assume leader has the 10 most of the time. Meanwhile the J is deadly, to the defence, if partner has say Qxx and sometimes Kxx(x). Picture dummy with Qxx and declarer A109. Why, thank you! Or dummy Axxx and declarer K10xx...again, thank you.

[lamford]

mikeh, on 2019-November-22, 11:16, said:

I think there is a downside, and one that I think is more likely than that LHO has found an insane but lucky lead. If RHO has Kxxx in hearts, you can't score 4 heart tricks, absent a red suit squeeze, and you are down.

As for it being an insane lead, there may be auctions where Jx seems reasonable, but surely not 1N 4N 6N!

Responder has, probably, a balanced hand and no 4 card major, thus making 3 or 4 clubs in dummy very probable. The Jack works ONLY if partner has the 10...this includes (usually) H10xx, especially since declarer will assume leader has the 10 most of the time. Meanwhile the J is deadly, to the defence, if partner has say Qxx and sometimes Kxx(x). Picture dummy with Qxx and declarer A109. Why, thank you! Or dummy Axxx and declarer K10xx...again, thank you.

The SIM was of the opening lead with Jxxx Txx Jxxx Jx, where the jack of clubs narrowly came out on top double dummy. The other three suits have their downsides as well. 10xx will be terrible with AJ9 opposite Kxxx for example, although that does not cost with Deep Finesse which unerringly finds the intra finesse.

More importantly, we are comparing the chance of a "short jack" lead and ♥ Kx(x) onside with "jack ten" lead and singleton king offside. I now think it is quite a big error to cash the ace of hearts, even though it would have been successful on the actual hand.

[mikeh]

lamford, on 2019-November-24, 13:14, said:

The SIM was of the opening lead with Jxxx Txx Jxxx Jx, where the jack of clubs narrowly came out on top double dummy. The other three suits have their downsides as well. 10xx will be terrible with AJ9 opposite Kxxx for example, although that does not cost with Deep Finesse which unerringly finds the intra finesse.

More importantly, we are comparing the chance of a "short jack" lead and ♥ Kx(x) onside with "jack ten" lead and singleton king offside. I now think it is quite a big error to cash the ace of hearts, even though it would have been successful on the actual hand.

Sims if opening leads are notoriously unreliable. Look at the Bird and Anthias books if you have any doubt.

Not only are sims bad, but you had to construct a hand with 4 bad lead options to create a sim in which a bad lead works. As declarer, you’d be nuts to infer that west had no normal lead. Give him xxxx xxx xxxx Jx and I’m willing to bet that the J is the worst lead

Give him jxxx xxx jxxx Jx, and I’m willing to bet that the heart lead is best. And so on.

If you want to do a sim, which I think to be silly since it would require an enormous amount of work, don’t give west any constraints other than having the club Jx. No other cards known.

But then, to give it an air of reality, you need to examine all hands to eliminate those where everyone would lead something else, such as 109876 987 1098 Jx: I’m sure that on a large enough run, the club J work be best some of the time. But since no-one would make that lead in real life, inclusion of those hands taints the value of the sim, and so on.