[pescetom]

In your hand you hold K832 plus the last remaining trumps and in the dummy you hold JT976 plus one side entry.
You have no real idea of how the suit will split between the defenders and you can only concede one trick.
You play the J and your RHO follows with the 5. How do you proceed and why?

[nige1]

pescetom, on 2019-January-23, 08:35, said:

In your hand you hold K832 plus the last remaining trumps and in the dummy you hold JT976 plus one side entry.You have no real idea of how the suit will split between the defenders and you can only concede one trick.You play the J and your RHO follows with the 5. How do you proceed and why?

You are missing AQ54. Without other information, If you're in dummy and have another entry, then you should finesse because

• Finesse wins when RHO holds AQ54 AQ5 AQ4 Q5 and Q4 (5 cases)
• King wins wen RHO holds A54 A5 and A4 (3 cases).
• In other cases, both lines achieve the same result.

[nullve]

Spoiler

pescetom, on 2019-January-23, 08:35, said:

In your hand you hold K832 plus the last remaining trumps and in the dummy you hold JT976 plus one side entry.
You have no real idea of how the suit will split between the defenders and you can only concede one trick.
You play the J and your RHO follows with the 5. How do you proceed and why?

No idea how the suit will split, really?

In normal circumstances I'd go up with the king because LHO

* would probably have led any singleton in the suit;
* would more likely lead the suit from Ax than from Qx;
* might have bid differently with a void in the suit.

On top of that, a sleepy RHO might have played the A from AQx or AQxx to prevent my singleton king from winning the trick.

[pescetom]

nullve, on 2019-January-23, 10:55, said:

spoiler

Of course there are always some clues about the opponents' hands and I'll be happy to provide the real picture later on.
But for now let's leave it as having no idea, to see if there any further considerations on play and probability.

Say we do finesse and LHO produces the A. We ruff the return in hand, enter dummy with the side suit and run the T, RHO following 4. What now?

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2019-January-23, 11:19, said:

Of course there are always some clues about the opponents' hands and I'll be happy to provide the real picture later on.
But for now let's leave it as having no idea, to see if there any further considerations on play and probability.

Say we do finesse and LHO produces the A. We ruff the return in hand, enter dummy with the side suit and run the T, RHO following 4. What now?

You are surely joking. We ran the Jack, forcing the Ace, when LHO, with AQ tight, had us set for sure had he won the Queen. The only time when you should even think about hooking again is if you've lost your mind. Yes, LHO might be having fun at your expense, but so what? Yes, it might be a Grosvenor coup in the making, but so what?

Rise with the King, and have LHO show out, and you will never live it down, nor should you. Hook, and lose to the Queen, everybody has a chuckle, and move on.

As for how RHO played his of her cards, only extraordinarily bad players give accurate count on all hands (assuming standard count). In fact it is a trivial and (against competent players) futile 'falsecard' to pretend to show 2 when one has 3.

Btw, if you almost always give count on defence, I would be happy to invite you to play against me for money:) However, more realistically you (and your partner) should STOP doing it. It is difficult, but one needs to develop the ability to know when count is important to partner. Count is sometimes useful to partner, but it is far more often useful to declarer. I love playing against players who always give count: it makes many hands an open book.

Paradoxically, playing against inveterate false-carders is almost as simple. My advice to this who like to signal count: give honest count when you think that the information will help partner; and simply play up the line at all other times. Don't false-card: there will be a few times when a false-card may be effective but that is something to work on later, once you've broken the habits of giving count, or always false-carding.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2019-January-23, 11:34, said:

You are surely joking. We ran the Jack, forcing the Ace, when LHO, with AQ tight, had us set for sure had he won the Queen.

Yes I was kidding for people like you, but thought it was a useful sanity check for any intermediates who actually read here

I'll dig out the actual hand to satisfy nullve now.

[pescetom]

Here's the actual hand that caused me to think about the problem.

---

It was the last of the evening and we didn't need to take any risks, but at MP making the overtrick was important. North had advertised spades in the auction and led the A. I don't remember the precise discards of NS, but they did suggest that N was 5224 and S 4225. I took the finesse and all was well, but I was irked that I wasn't lucid enough to remember or calculate the odds before doing so.

For the record, out of 174 that played this board, 83 scored -480 and 18 -450. So 83% got it right and took 67% instead of 37%.

[nullve]

So South unblocked the ♥J, giving you a second entry to dummy?

Btw, why didn't South raise preemptively to 3♠? I guess there are players who would do that with

JT82
J6
A5
JT985

but not with

JT82
J6
Q5
JT986,

considering it less safe due to lack of points or whatever, so that's a hint as to the diamond layout.

[pescetom]

North is a bit of a hothead and South is conservative, I imagine that vulnerable against a strong opening he decided that discretion is the better part of valour. But yes, it does suggest something about diamonds.

[johnu]

nullve, on 2019-January-24, 12:51, said:

So South unblocked the ♥J, giving you a second entry to dummy?

That's my question too. If you only have 1 entry to dummy, you can't repeat the diamond finesse if South has AQx(x) or Qxx