[OleBerg]

Scoring: IMP

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You reach 6♠ vs. opponents that seem uninterested in the bidding.

The ♥10 is led, and RHO follows with a low.

[ArtK78]

Win the heart lead in dummy and play a low spade, covering RHO's spot. This gives us a chance of handling 5-0 spades in RHO's hand at the small risk of LHO winning this trick and giving RHO a ruff.

If RHO plays the 9, 10 or J of spades at trick 2, I win in hand and, if LHO shows out, play a non-spade to dummy and another spade through RHO. He must split again or I can win the 8. Now I run all my non-spade winners trying to guess which suits RHO has 3 in, as I need to cash them first. If I can cash 8 of my 9 non-spade winners without RHO ruffing in, I can play the last one and RHO is endplayed in spades.

If spades are not 5-0, this hand is trivial.

[gwnn]

in Denmark they always overcall or at least act interested if they have 5 cards in spades

[gnasher]

ArtK78, on Jun 4 2010, 07:06 PM, said:

Win the heart lead in dummy and play a low spade, covering RHO's spot. This gives us a chance of handling 5-0 spades in RHO's hand at the small risk of LHO winning this trick and giving RHO a ruff.

A 0=5 spade break occurs about 2% of the time; a 6=1 heart break about 4%. Whilst West wouldn't always lead his six-card suit, I think he'd probably do so more than half of the time.

Maybe what was funny about the hand was that somebody went down with trumps 3-2, and in the other room they bid and made seven?

[ArtK78]

gnasher, on Jun 4 2010, 01:38 PM, said:

ArtK78, on Jun 4 2010, 07:06 PM, said:

Win the heart lead in dummy and play a low spade, covering RHO's spot.  This gives us a chance of handling 5-0 spades in RHO's hand at the small risk of LHO winning this trick and giving RHO a ruff.

A 0=5 spade break occurs about 2% of the time; a 6=1 heart break about 4%. Whilst West wouldn't always lead his six-card suit, I think he'd probably do so more than half of the time.

Maybe what was funny about the hand was that somebody went down with trumps 3-2, and in the other room they bid and made seven?

Yes, it is possible that West is leading a heart from 6, but then, why the ♥10 when he would have to have the ♥J if he had 6? Even if you play Rusinow leads, they do not usually apply against slam contracts. And we were not told of any unusual lead styles in effect in this problem.

The combination of the odds that West has led from 6 hearts and also chose to lead the 10 rather than the J seem smaller to me than the chance that East has all 5 spades.

That is why I am not too concerned about a heart ruff here.

[Jlall]

gnasher, on Jun 4 2010, 01:38 PM, said:

ArtK78, on Jun 4 2010, 07:06 PM, said:

Win the heart lead in dummy and play a low spade, covering RHO's spot.  This gives us a chance of handling 5-0 spades in RHO's hand at the small risk of LHO winning this trick and giving RHO a ruff.

A 0=5 spade break occurs about 2% of the time; a 6=1 heart break about 4%. Whilst West wouldn't always lead his six-card suit, I think he'd probably do so more than half of the time.

Maybe what was funny about the hand was that somebody went down with trumps 3-2, and in the other room they bid and made seven?

Unless they play rusinow, it also requires LHO to have falsecarded his honor card lead. I think this happens very infrequently, maybe I'm naive.

Of course if your opps are completely perfect, then RHO would always drop the jack, so the fact that he didn't drop the jack means LHO has falsecarded his lead...

Anyways back to the real world. I think it is correct to make the overtrick here, even if RHO has JT9xx of trumps sometimes we just can never make (he needs the right shape) and when he does have the right shape we need to guess it (not 100 %) and sometimes he would have split when we led off the dummy (non zero chance).

Against that, sometimes if trumps are 3-2 the other guys will find the grand and our overtrick won't matter, but it's still so unlikely we gain anything other than dropping a trick that I find it hard to safety play in this situation. I think 1N-6N is a significantly normal auction (34-36 HCP and 4333...) that I don't think them playing 7 sometimes is enough of a factor.

[xcurt]

add in that in most situations IMPs have diminishing marginal utility, so we aren't really laying 14:1 odds (of winning the match, or in VPs whichever) by playing high spades.