[mikl_plkcc]

Board 2

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I needed 12 tricks but there were only 10 available, I tried playing diamonds for 3-3 to get the 11th and couldn't see any viable way to get the 12th. The diamonds weren't 3-3 and I got down 2, but the field made 6NT. I lost 15 IMPs.

Board 8

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I wanted to drive the ♦A out first, then use the ♠A as the entry to run it. As you can see, I played ♦ two times but the A didn't come out, so I started to try other suits to gain entries, but I failed to do so, and the defenders didn't play to the dummy. The A only came out when I exhausted all the entries.

Other tables all got overtricks and I lost 10.8 IMPs.

Can anyone explain to me what I did wrong?

[thepossum]

The second one you just have to keep attacking diamonds from dummy while you still have your Ace of spades

First one is a bit more tricky but you have to protect all your suits and lead towards the high diamonds rather than away from - always safer to keep a high card to block and lead towards. Obviously with tow winners you can lead with one of them, but not usually both. There is a long club suit maybe ducking around early gives you all the other tricks. Just adding up how many tricks I may have now - maybe 11 hopefully - and maybe the other one just drops

I will wait for expert - I tend to play rather randomly. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn' but in a difficult hand you have to stop their suits at all costs

[smerriman]

On the first hand, as you noted, playing in diamonds can't be right since even if they break 3-3, you still only have 11 tricks, and if not, you're always down.

Meanwhile if clubs break 3-3 you have 12 top tricks, so that has to be better than diamonds. As to exactly how to play the clubs, I think a double finesse is better than just playing for 3-3, though it turns out you're going to make no matter what you try.

On the second hand, just overtake the second diamond so you can keep running them from dummy.

[helene_t]

The first one: diamonds can give you only one extra trick and you need two. So you have to start with clubs. You cannot afford to start with diaminds as you probably have to lose a club trick and if you have played three rounds of diamonds first, the enemy who win the club trick may also take a diamond trick.

Just cashing two top clubs gives you about 50% chance. It would work here as clubs are 3-3. You can do a bit better by playing cl10 and let it run if W doesn't cover. It is a complex hand:
- loosing a club trick safely allows you to rectify the count for a squeeze
- if w drops an honour on the second diamond trick you may chose restricted chouce.
- playing clubs in a way that may give you one extra tricks on some layouts can be combined with one extra trick in diaminds.

But as smeriman says, on the actual layout any reasonable line works.

The second one, as Possum says you have to win the second diamond trick in North so you can keep playing diamonds until they take the ace.

[awm]

Again I really strongly recommend the bridgemaster hands as a way to improve. These two hands have themes around counting your tricks and maintaining transportation that are well illustrated in levels 1-2 of bridgemaster. Once you have seen these themes a few times you will get it right consistently at the table. While the level 5 hands are challenging even for experts, mastering the lower levels will help you a lot in your club.

Bridgemaster is available from the BBO home page (here), or by going to "Practice" once you log in. It's free.

[mikl_plkcc]

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6NT. I could count 4 in ♥, 3 in ♠, 2 in ♦ and 1 in ♣, and needed to play for 2 more.

I had no idea how I could do that, so I first played a finesse against the ♠J and it worked, but I still needed 1 more trick.

After 9 tricks I ran out of ideas. There were two possible finesse but there was no hint from the bidding where the remaining high cards were. so I made a blind guess and it was wrong, and it was already too late to correct as I already played all the entries away.

What should I have done that I could work out which finesse would work? And was there any line of play which could cater for the case when both cards were off?

[smerriman]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-March-19, 11:09, said:

and it was already too late to correct as I already played all the entries away.

I think you answered your own question here Don't cash all of your entries first - then when one finesse fails, you can try the other.

As to your second question, it is makeable double dummy if West has Kxxx of clubs and the diamond queen. Take an early club finesse; if it fails, cash everything to be in North with a club and diamond in hand and KJ diamonds in dummy. If West keeps Qx of diamonds, your club is good, so they'll have to leave themselves a stiff queen of diamonds which you could drop.

Of course, you won't know to drop it, though the robots may give away the contract by discarding the wrong thing, thinking you're going to make either way. An expert defender would bare the queen without any hesitation, so this line wouldn't gain you anything.

[helene_t]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-March-19, 11:09, said:

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It is basically a question of two of the three finesses working, which has 50% chace. You can improve a bit on this in a few ways:

- Missing the Jack, it is 6-ever-seven-never, playing spades for the drop is a bit better than the finesse. If you go for the drop you cash ♠KQ first so that you also have the chance that W had a singleton spades so that the finesse is marked.
- Take the club finesse, then cash ♣A, ♦A and your major suit winners, ending in Noth while discarding South's last club on the hearts. There's a small chance that a minor suit squeeze has materialized (you have to hope that E discards all his diamonds so that there are no small diamonds left so you know to drop W's bare ♦Q). Otherwise you take the diamond finesse.
- Strip the major suits and play ♣9. On the actual deal, East can't cover ♣9 so W will be endplayed and you will make it even if both minor suit finesses fail.

[Cyberyeti]

helene_t, on 2025-March-20, 03:18, said:

It is basically a question of two of the three finesses working, which has 50% chace. You can improve a bit on this in a few ways:

- Missing the Jack, it is 6-ever-seven-never, playing spades for the drop is a bit better than the finesse. If you go for the drop you cash ♠KQ first so that you also have the chance that W had a singleton spades so that the finesse is marked.
- Take the club finesse, then cash ♣A, ♦A and your major suit winners, ending in Noth while discarding South's last club on the hearts. There's a small chance that a minor suit squeeze has materialized (you have to hope that E discards all his diamonds so that there are no small diamonds left so you know to drop W's bare ♦Q). Otherwise you take the diamond finesse.
- Strip the major suits and play ♣9. On the actual deal, East can't cover ♣9 so W will be endplayed and you will make it even if both minor suit finesses fail.

If you strip the hearts but not the spades, you endplay W to give you a trick 100% with that club layout. Best for them is to return a diamond, now all you have to do is pick up the spades or failing that take the club hook.

[helene_t]

I suck at this kind of analysis but it seems to me that the endplay won't work with the actual 3-3 holding in the majors by West because we need to keep an entry for the diamond finesse in case the endplay doesn't work (in case E covers ♣9) so we play only two rounds of hearts, and W has a safe exit in hearts.

Probably the endplay is still a bit better than the squeeze, and I don't think the two can be combined.

Probably, for the B/N forum the best advice is not to worry about additional chances bu just go for the spade drop and the minor suit finesse. The heart suit gives plenty of communication between the hands so the easiest play is to keep hearts intact until you don't need communication any more.

[mikl_plkcc]

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I failed to find the 9th trick but the field made it. Where was it?

[helene_t]

As it happened, West cashed two diamonds and at that point you have 3s + 2h + 3c + 1d = 9.

Against better defense it becomes an interesting hand. With open cards it looks like E will be squeezed and eventually endplayed, but it probably isn't easy to find in practice if W keeps playing hearts.

[smerriman]

It appears you miscounted the diamonds and thought the 6 was a winner. All you could do at that point was cash your top tricks and happily find the ♣Q dropped doubleton.

[smerriman]

helene_t, on 2025-March-25, 17:14, said:

Against better defense it becomes an interesting hand. With open cards it looks like E will be squeezed and eventually endplayed, but it probably isn't easy to find in practice if W keeps playing hearts.

Actually, I think you'll be somewhat forced into making it on heart leads. Whenever you cash the ♠A you find the 0-6 break, and you'll find out clubs are 2-5 when the queen drops. You don't really have any other option but to lead a diamond towards dummy at some point before the heart stoppers have gone, so you'll know East only has all of the remaining clubs and spades.

Then it's just a case of recognising a spade duck is not only safe, but the only thing you can try, and guarantees the contract.

[johnu]

On the play of the red suits, you know that West started out with exactly 6 hearts, and exactly 5 diamonds, because East showed out on the 2nd round of both suits. You know that East started with exactly 6 spades because West showed out on the first round.

So, East started with
♠J9xxxx
♥x
♦x
♣(Q?)xxxx

And West with exactly a doubleton club.

So, after setting up a diamond trick, winning a heart return, play the ♣AK which will eliminate the clubs with West. As it turns out, ♣Q drops setting up the jack, so cash the winning diamond and take your spade winners and club winner for 9 top tricks.

If the club queen didn't drop doubleton, play your losing club, endplaying East who had to pitch a club on your winning diamond to maintain a spade guard. East will have nothing but spades left and you will win the last 3 spade tricks.

[mikl_plkcc]

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I couldn't find the 9th trick and it was in hearts. The honour combination was too complicated for me to handle that even the 8 played a role here, and I could only see it by going through the double dummy multiple times. How should I count tricks for such honour combinations?

Also, in the ♣, was I correct in playing the finesse, or should I played for a drop instead? I could only remember 11 drop - 10 finesse for the K, 9-8 for the Q and 7-6 for the J if there was a single honour missing, but how should I play if there were more than 1 honour missing?

Furthermore, there are two honour combinations I don't understand the optimal play.

Assuming enough entries, if one hand holds the A-Q-T, under what circumstances should I play the double finesse, and under what circumstances should I play straight to the Q, if the J or K doesn't come out?

The other case is that, one hand holds A-T and some low cards, and the other holds the Q with K and J missing, what's the optimal line of play?

[smerriman]

My thoughts:

- I don't think it can ever be right to finesse the club. Remember East led the jack of clubs.. for the finesse to work (and the drop to fail) they must have led from JTxx, despite knowing you had bid clubs, throwing away a trick as that's a holding you could have never picked up otherwise..

- Having done so anyway, when West leads the ♦3 wouldn't it be better to run this to the 9? The J can't win the trick but if West has the T, you'll draw out a high honor and give you a chance of leading to the 8 later if you need to.

- Putting that aside, you still had 9 top tricks after cashing the last club.. just play a heart to knock out the king. Even if you had forgotten that West had played the T and there was only one high card left, there's nothing to lose by trying a heart, compared to just cashing your aces and automatically conceding the rest.

- The other combinations can't really be answered without context; it depends on many factors, including how many tricks you need in the suit.

[helene_t]

The club finesse works when JT are both onside, which has about 24% chance, but maybe a bit less because with jtxx East might have played an honour to prevent the finesse. And if east has jtxxx the finesse will only give you four tricks which may not be enough. The drop is better, about 39% I think. It is a bit different in a 5-2 than 4-3 fit because with 4-3 you should finesse if W drops an honour on the second trick (restricted choice) but drop if W play low on second trick.

As for aqt, to maximize your chance of two extra tricks you need to play to the ten (but with aqtx you cash the ace first). To maximize the chance of one extra trick it doesn't matter if you play q or t. You may play to the queen if you prefer not to loose a trick.

[mikl_plkcc]

Also I am playing Bridge Master and even the beginner level is sometimes too difficult for me.

In some hands it tells me to duck a trick to avoid bad breaks, but in some it tells me to do a better percentage play on 2-1 without telling me the correct play for 3-0.

In some hands it tells me to play a side suit for 3 tricks in a trump contract before drawing trumps, in other to ruff a loser in the 3rd trick, but in some other hands if I don't draw trumps early enough I will get ruffed by the opponents. In some hands it also tells me to avoid drawing trumps before discarding my loser because once I draw trump, they will attack my weak suit, but how about the chance of them ruffing my strong suit to set my contract?

[awm]

Bridge master is designed for IMPs play, so you want to maximize your chance to make the contract. Sometimes if suits break badly you have no chance, and in these cases you must play for suits to break. Sometimes your only way to get rid of a loser is by ruffing; in these cases you may need to defer pulling trumps because otherwise you can never make.

Of course, if you can afford to take a safety play (for example ducking a trick in a suit in case they break badly) this can also be correct. The point is that you must consider how to make your contract with the best possible chances.