[gnasher]

Scoring: IMP

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One more interesting thing about this hand. At my table, we reached 6♦ without any intervention, and LHO led ♠Q. When I drew trumps, RHO threw two spades. Now I played three rounds of spades, ruffing, and RHO threw a club on the second round. Hence I knew he was 3415, but I wasn't entitled to know that.

This was in the second division of the English Premier League, against a team which was briefly in the top division a couple of years ago.

What's your philosophy in this sort of situation? Do you try to out-think them, or just ignore the free information and stick to what you're entitled to know?

[dake50]

You mean RHO had an easy 5th C-discard and instead painted his shape. Why?
Does he have wheels spinning or just random card-throwing?
He wanted to show H:Qx / H:xxxx? Or let me think HQ wasn't dropping?
I always play opponents to have played purposeful. Here, RHO WANTED his shape known. I expect H:Qx.
First a club toward CQ.

[pooltuna]

I don't recall the details of the earlier post. How were you able to divine RHO is 3415 rather than 3514, 3613,3316 or 3217? Presumably his inability to take a preemptive call in the auction as well as that LHO might have led a stiff ♣ or ♥ played into the decision. Or maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet this morning.

[gnasher]

pooltuna, on Sep 19 2010, 03:05 PM, said:

I don't recall the details of the earlier post. How were you able to divine RHO is 3415 rather than 3514, 3613,3316 or 3217? Presumably his inability to take a preemptive call in the auction as well as that LHO might have led a stiff ♣ or ♥ played into the decision. Or maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet this morning.

OK, we don't know that he's 3415, though it's his most likely shape - all we know is that he has nine cards in the round suits. Anyway, that wasn't really the point.

[gnasher]

dake50, on Sep 19 2010, 02:29 PM, said:

You mean RHO had an easy 5th C-discard and instead painted his shape. Why?
Does he have wheels spinning or just random card-throwing?
He wanted to show H:Qx / H:xxxx? Or let me think HQ wasn't dropping?
I always play opponents to have played purposeful. Here, RHO WANTED his shape known. I expect H:Qx.

So if RHO is looking at xxx Qxxx x Kxxxx you will go down in a contract that you were about to make.

Quote

First a club toward CQ.

That gives up a significant extra chance. If you take a heart finesse and lose to a doubleton queen, the player who wins may be endplayed to lead a club or give a ruff and discard. That chance is worth about 4%.

[dake50]

gnasher,

Do you mean 4% more now?
Or 4% a priori decreased by shape inferences from discards?

To gain from C-switch if H:Qx wins (my LHO case -painted by RHO) HK in the 3xC of LHO, not 5xC of RHO? Hard to believe that adds 4%.

[gnasher]

Quote

Do you mean 4% more now?
Or 4% a priori decreased by shape inferences from discards?

I meant 4% a priori, and it was only an estimate. The endplay gains when hearts are 4-2 (48%), a specific hand has the doubleton (24%), that doubleton is the queen (8%), and that hand has ♣K (4%).

I haven't adjusted for the known reliable distributional information (diamonds 3=1), the statistically irrelevant distributional information (spades 5=3), or the increased liklihood that a player with a doubleton heart will have ♣K.

Quote

To gain from C-switch if H:Qx wins (my LHO case -painted by RHO) HK in the 3xC of LHO, not 5xC of RHO?

Sorry, but I don't understand what your planned line is, or why you think it will be improved by playing a club first.

Quote

Hard to believe that adds 4%.

You could try doing the arithmetic yourself.

[MFA]

As a general philosophy I would tend to assume they made a mistake and use all the information even that I'm not entitled to in the first place. Also against strong opponents. Each situation has to be analyzed individually of course. But defending is hard, and visualizing declarer's full count problems is even harder. Defenders tend to worry mostly about not costing tricks objectively.

I think I'm a little more sceptical when it comes to someone unnecessarily displaying high cards that could potentially make me play the other defender for some specific card. But still my starting point is that they probably just made a mistake.

[hanp]

Agree with MFA. Very often defenders will even show their count out of habit, for the purpose of helping partner. Echoing is most common but discarding all your cards from one suit so that partner knows that declarer doesn't have length there is also common.

That could be what's going on here, partner has led the queen of spades, we don't have spade honors and we can make the count easy for partner by discarding our spades.

It is a shame that I already know who has the heart queen. It may be the case that east is trying to show his shorter spades so that we don't play him for heart length, but I think that there are few defenders at that level.

[FrancesHinden]

I agree with MFA and hanp.

Most defenders - even very good players - are usually more concerned about not letting cold off contracts make than they are about subtle deceptive defensive signals. There are plenty of hands where simply given correct count and signalling honour strength is the only thing worth doing (e.g. to avoid isolating a menace by accident).

Obviously this isn't always the case, particularly if the obvious problem on the hand is known early on, but I think it's generally true.

Our teammates on this hand agreed afterwards how they should have discarded slightly differently to conceal the heart count better. But they didn't do it at the table.

[eyhung]

Interesting you posted this hand today. It is similar to a hand I was reading in a bridge column yesterday where Lauria decided to drop his LHO's doubleton queen after RHO, known to have four, went out of his way to not discard one, causing Lauria to believe that RHO did NOT have the queen.

Link:
http://aces.bridgeblogging.com/?p=2188

[rogerclee]

eyhung, on Sep 22 2010, 04:42 PM, said:

Interesting you posted this hand today.  It is similar to a hand I was reading in a bridge column yesterday where Lauria decided to drop his LHO's doubleton queen after RHO, known to have four, went out of his way to not discard one, causing Lauria to believe that RHO did NOT have the queen.

Link:
http://aces.bridgeblogging.com/?p=2188

Don't try this one at home.