Venting April 12, 2009
Posted by justinlall in The Bet.Tags: Declarer Play, Intermediate
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Josh and I put a lot of hours in today for the bet, playing 8 tourneys in all. Since we are sick, we both also played more tourneys when the other person wanted a break.
My results today were pretty terrible. I definitely didn’t play great, but the bad luck I was getting on slam hands was just insane. Here is an example:
Kxx
K
AQ9xx
Txxx
AJ
Axx
Jx
AJ9xxx
You do quite well to bid 6 after opening 1N, and receive a heart lead. How do you play?
The best idea here is to strip out the major suits, and go ace and a club. True, you lose to KQx onside now if the DK was onside all along, but you pick up Hx of clubs with the DK on your right, a much more likely combination. So win the heart in dummy and lead a club (maybe they split), then strip the majors and exit a club. Unfortunately it was KQx onside, so your good play is not rewarded.
Note that on a spade lead you have a pitch for your diamond so could safety play the trumps. This is not horrible luck, but if stuff like this happens to you 5 times in a row you can get a little frustrated.
Anyways, luckily Josh didn’t have a great day either so I’m still very much in this. When the luck turns I have little doubt that I wll start crushing 
I disagree with your proposed line. by playing the A of trump first you also fail with stiff K of trump onside with the K of D. I think you should play H S H(pitching S) H ruff then trump. you can now judge to finesse or just play A but you can also opt to duck the K if it shows up hoping it is stiff and that the H’s aren’t 5-3 the wrong way and that the S aren’t 62 wrong. This feels much better to me. I would not want to go down with the D K onside.
So if no honor shows up you’re going to finesse the club? This seems wrong to me, Hx of clubs on right and the DK is more likely than KQx of clubs on right, especially since with KQx of clubs and the DK if they split you go down anyways.
You’re right if the club K pops up you should duck so it’s better to strip the majors before playing a club though.
i would finesse
Hi Justin,
I have recently also started playing these robot tournaments again and have found that the GIB usually likes to bid at the 7 level over what i would consider a signoff bid. This usually results in a horrible score as 6 was the right contract. Do you also find this to be a problem?
u are right that it is about twice as good to fly and risk failure with KQx onside.
George, always bid keycard before you bid a slam. Even though it slows you down even if you have a void, it just stops GIB from bidding 7. I’m pretty sure Josh does this also.