[jjbrr]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-18, 10:46, said:

Sorry, I'm struggling with that. I'm trying to plan the hand and I see the basic principle of establishing two long ♦ tricks, but will I have the entries into dummy when I need them? My only way in is via the long ♠s and to use these I first need to void in dummy's ♥ suit, which looks like your first strategy (ruff 2♥ and one ♦) is required by default. I'm really not sure, but I think that if I start on that route the ♦ route becomes unavailable…

You are correct. If we erroneously pull three rounds of trumps, and they play ♥ every time we play a ♦ to try to establish it as a long suit, we will run out of entries to the diamonds before we're able to enjoy them.

If the defense errs and plays a club instead of a heart at any point, and ♦ are 3-3, then we have just enough entries to set them up and we'll still have a trump to get over to them.

Obviously it's better for declarer to ruff his losers in dummy before pulling trumps. It's a good hand to demonstrate the importance of counting your winners and losers before you set out declaring the hand. You can count 2 club winners, and no winners anywhere outside of trumps, so we know we need to take 8 tricks with our spade cards. If we pull three rounds, that leaves us with only 2♣, 3 rounds of ♠, and then 2 more ♠ winners in each hand = 9 tricks.

If we ruff 3 losers first, we can take 2♣+3 ruffs in dummy+5 ♠ tricks in hand.

[blackshoe]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-18, 09:29, said:

Thank you! I saw that term referred to in another post, without explanation, but decided that I had already made too much noise, so I decided to remain ignorant.

You may find The Bridge World Glossary useful.

[JustaDummy]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-18, 17:21, said:

You may find The Bridge World Glossary useful.

Thank you! Bookmarked

[Vampyr]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-18, 10:46, said:

Sorry, I'm struggling with that. I'm trying to plan the hand and I see the basic principle of establishing two long ♦ tricks, but will I have the entries into dummy when I need them? My only way in is via the long ♠s and to use these I first need to void in dummy's ♥ suit, which looks like your first strategy (ruff 2♥ and one ♦) is required by default. I'm really not sure, but I think that if I start on that route the ♦ route becomes unavailable…

Yes. But jjbrr said that you would be reduced to trying to set up the diamonds if you started on an incorrect line. Setting up your own hand by ruffing three losers is what you really want to do.

[Zelandakh]

shevek, on 2012-March-16, 20:24, said:

One book has
1H - 2H/1NT as 6-10, therefore 3H limit = 11-12 TP.

The other has
1H - 2H/1NT as 6-9, so 3H = 10-12 TP.

Traditionally a weak hand was 6-9 and an invitational hand was 10-12. Over time players realised that a 3 point range at the 3 level was too large for good accuracy and therefore started to downgrade their bad 10s to weak hands. The 4.5 to 5 point range at the 2 level was less of a problem since you have an extra level of bidding space to sort it out. In essence the ranges went from 2-2-3 (weak min - weak max - inv) to 2.5 - 2 - 2.5. This evening out of the ranges represents a good boost to accuracy in constructive bidding.

Thus the answer is that both are correct but one is showing a more modern style than the other.