[lamford]

MrAce, on 2014-September-12, 14:50, said:

Indeed spell checking is a sign of losing the debate. But if you are going to do it anyway, at least you could try to avoid the typo yourself, in your very last of the promised last posts in this topic

I am sure that I made others, if we are going to find faults. And is it "spell checking" rather than "spell-checking" in Texas? And I wasn't aware that an emoticon could be used instead of a full-stop.

[lamford]

PhilKing, on 2014-September-12, 02:28, said:

So it would appear that, if one assumes that lefty started with ♦KQJxxx, the contract is a spread by winning the first trick, since one can still exit a diamond in a perfectly defended end-game.

The only danger is that righty started with ♦Jx. I spoke to East (the author of a book on preemepts), and he stated that the chances of him not bidding 4♦ at the vulnerabilty with seven was somewhat unlikely.

This is by far the most interesting of the recent posts, rather than the childish squabbles about typos which I foolishly and unjustifiably started, for which I again apologise. I think, however, you are wrong. If West started with something like ♠xxx ♥Jxx ♦KQJxxx ♣x which is probably his most likely hand, you need to duck the opening lead. If you win it and run the clubs coming down to the ending that you probably have in mind, then West keeps two diamonds and three hearts and there is no way home.

---

South leads the last club, and West pitches a spade, and it does not matter what you throw from North. And this does not require any great knowledge of squeezes by EW, or any Phantomsac magic of keeping or pitching a second diamond by East. East can throw his second diamond any time he likes - as his first discard if he likes.

And this time we do not have the option of reading the ending. When I went through the 24 hands that I dealt, I assumed that the declarer would guess the ending half the time, where one line worked and one did not. I stand by that approach.

If West starts with ♠xxxx ♥Jx ♦KQJxxx ♣x, then you obviously have to win the opening lead, but you now have a simple squeeze without the count on East, regardless of the diamond layout. If East has a second diamond, he is in theory squeezed out of it, but he should bare the king of spades instead. It will be blindingly obvious in the five card ending, which is the first time East comes under pressure, that to come down to ♠KJ ♥QTx is fatal. We then reach this ending:

---

The lead is in South, and we do not know whether East has a second spade, in which case West will have three diamonds. Of course, we will guess this over half the time from the tempo, but I feel sure that East at the table, who won a prize at the Lederer a couple of years ago for playing a hand better than Zia, and goes under the sobriquet of "The Learned Doctor", would have defended well. West has to co-operate by keeping a spade, but this he will do automatically by having to keep two diamonds and only having been dealt two hearts in our putative layout.

[PhantomSac]

Nice to have you back posting in this thread. Earlier you said:

Quote

I still maintain the correct line is to win the first diamond, draw trumps and take the spade finesse.

Do you still maintain this?

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-10, 03:16, said:

I have so far gone through 24 hands consistent with the auction, and, while your line, or other lines, worked more often than the simple spade finesse, they often required one to cheat by looking at the opponents' cards. In the 24 hands I dealt, which is admittedly a small sample, the spade finesse worked on nine of them (which accords with the expected value of 6.5/18), and your line worked on six.

This was also an interesting post, can you explain it? My line always has the option of playing for the SK to be on in the endgame. So why did my line work on 3 less hands than taking the spade finesse? Do you realize why what you said makes absolutely no sense and hurts your credibility?

[MrAce]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 15:01, said:

I am sure that I made others, if we are going to find faults. And is it spell checking rather than spell-checking in Texas? And I wasn't aware that an emoticon could be used instead of a full-stop.

It was just to mess around with you, since you enabled yourself wide open to it. LoL, sorry but you did.
It ain't just an emoticon, it's a big DOT with eyes and a tongue hanging from the mouth in it.
And your example of "breaching the promise by politicians" is one of the funniest attempts I had seen, in order to justify not doing the things that you said you will do. Besides your attempt to post the end position which was created by an awful declarer play, after giving us a lecture about the strength of THE COMMONWEALTH games and expected defense level. Must be an event of expert defenders vs national newcomers' declarers!

You damn well know that I do not care about your faults in spelling or typos. You do that. You did that in the past too. It's your native language and each and every single time you can not shoot back reasonable arguments, you just turn back and try to drag the debate down to language skills, spell checking, grammar checking...I know it's embarrassing when you start a topic in the expert forum and can not even understand what a top expert replied to you, even after repeatedly and very well explained.

But seriously, you need to just ST*U already. Chill the ***** down and go get your nuts rubbed!

EDITED to fix a typo!

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 14:57, said:

I lied. I do it all the time when I give false count, lead fifth best instead of promised fourth. Normally, anyway, undertaking not to post again and then doing so is regarded as "breach of promise" rather than lying. Politicians do that all the time. Am I bovvered?

It is one thing to say you are not posting again in a thread and post. It is another to say that you said you were not posting again "save to say that the end position above was actually reached at the table." Do you see the difference? You did not actually say the 2nd part, so you lied about what you said. Even that's not so bad (though it doesn't make much sense when your words are written for all to see), but you used that to say that I was making a fool of myself for responding to your post.

[PhantomSac]

MrAce, on 2014-September-12, 15:26, said:

Besides your attempt to post the end position which was created by an awful declarer play, after giving us a lecture about the strength of THE COMMONWEALTH games and expected defense level. Must be an event of expert defenders vs national newcomers' declarers!

But wait, Timo, that's not fair! We also got lectured that RHO would never pitch their diamond, when in fact they did, so it was also national newcomers defenders, not experts!

[MrAce]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 15:31, said:

But wait, Timo, that's not fair! We also got lectured that RHO would never pitch their diamond, when in fact they did, so it was also national newcomers defenders, not experts!

That's true. It is kinda hard to keep up and see all the inconsistencies produced by Lamford. I missed that part tbh.
We need to change the name of the topic to "Common B***fest Challenge".

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-11, 19:11, said:

This is the expert forum, not the novice and beginner forum, and therefore we should assume perfect defence in any discussion of the merits of any line.

That's interesting, so in your opinion experts defend perfectly and that is what we should base our lines on? Or is your opinion simply that we should change the expert forum to the theoretical forum?

Quote

I did go to the trouble of dealing 24 boards and looking at the various lines with perfect defence, and thought that drawing trumps and finessing the spade was correct; yes I did consider what everyone else said, and I rejected the "psycho" line of ducking the first diamond, and rejected the line of playing the "squeeze/endplay" and even adjusted those lines for perfect defence of baring the king of spades. I was already confident that those two lines were quite a bit inferior based on a painstaking analysis of a mere 24 boards.

That's interesting, how can drawing trumps and taking a spade finesse ever be better than running all your clubs and coming down to this ending:

AQ
x
xx
--

x
AK9
T

Even if your plan is always to take the spade finesse, you can still do that. You get a free roll that RHO has pitched a diamond. If they have done so, you are cold unless the SK is off and LHO started with 3+ hearts. You have zero risk also. You cash the AK of hearts. If LHO shows out they have to pitch a spade. Now if RHO is down to 1 heart you can endplay them, if they are down to 2 hearts then spades are 1-1. This does not require anything other than to be able to count to 13. If LHO follows twice to the hearts, we know they are down to 2 diamonds and 1 major suit card. If there are 3 spades and 1 heart remaining, we can play a heart, if RHO has it they are endplayed, if LHO has it we were not going to make it if we pulled trumps and took a spade finesse anyways. So we just gained something over immediately finessing the spade, a line that you are confident is right, and risked nothing. If there are 2 spades and 2 hearts remaining, we can play a spade. If LHO follows then spades are 1-1. Again, this just requires counting to 13, there is no risk.

If RHO does not pitch a diamond and you think you have no edge in reading any end position, you can just take your finesse and you have lost nothing. Why not try, would it be insulting to our COMMONWEALTH GAMES opps? You lose absolutely nothing, so it makes me wonder about your intellectual honesty when you say that this line makes 6 times out of 24 when an immediate spade finesse makes 9 times out of 24, or that you "maintain the correct line is to draw trumps and take a spade finesse" when that strategy is clearly dominated by coming down to this ending and seeing what has happened since you don't have to risk anything at all.

All of this information has already been laid out to you but you stubbornly "maintain" your position, it's quite fascinating.

Since you have already lied (by your own admission and words) and been proven to be wrong about bridge and judgement many times in this very thread, I wonder if you even went over these 24 hands, and if you did why you would not post them here and show your "logic" and assumptions so we can discuss them. It doesn't even matter though as even without the hands posted it is obvious that you have gone very wrong somewhere.

[lamford]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 15:26, said:

This was also an interesting post, can you explain it? My line always has the option of playing for the SK to be on in the endgame. So why did my line work on 3 less hands than taking the spade finesse? Do you realize why what you said makes absolutely no sense and hurts your credibility?

No, because you can go off on lines with the king of spades right by attempting the endplay on East. I assumed that you guess the play half the time where one layout works and one does not. Your line does have the option of playing for the SK to be on in the endgame. If you are going to do that whenever there is no alternative, then both lines are the same. If you play a second diamond instead when there are two diamonds out, then you can go off when West has the king of spades, whether or not he has bared it.

[MrAce]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 15:44, said:

That's interesting, so in your opinion experts defend perfectly and that is what we should base our lines on? Or is your opinion simply that we should change the expert forum to the theoretical forum?

Actually this what you said is something I also wanted to mention but forgot in the heat of the argument. As I said, when there are so many things all over the place that does not make sense, one can miss the most important thing. Expert defense or declarer play does not mean GIB in godlike mode. For example this is why I like it when Andy (Gnasher) or Rainer besides you write their line of play or defense. Sometimes they cater for the effects of alternative lines over the defenders, and this makes it more real to me than declaring vs DD, godlike machines (or now "A.K.A Commonwealth defenders).

[lamford]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 15:44, said:

That's interesting, so in your opinion experts defend perfectly and that is what we should base our lines on? Or is your opinion simply that we should change the expert forum to the theoretical forum?



That's interesting, how can drawing trumps and taking a spade finesse ever be better than running all your clubs and coming down to this ending:

AQ
x
xx
--

x
AK9
T

I confess I made the assumption that declarer never took the spade finesse, and assumed the spade was offside, so the declarer would duck a diamond when there were two out. It was a tedious enough task comparing "the spade finesse" with "other lines" as it was. I have gone through the 24 hands again, and playing as you do is at least as good as the spade finesse, provided that you revert to the spade finesse when you are not sure to make the contract otherwise. I am beginning to think Phil King's belief that ducking the initial diamond is right, but I have no feel for the percentage of the time West has seven diamonds. My setting of 6-7 diamonds may not be the correct one and the times that the diamond was ruffed were obviously fatal.

For example, one of the hands, board 17 (and I see, very similarly board 21), reached this ending:

---

I assumed you threw East in with a heart, here, but you now say that you would take the spade finesse when there is no diamond discard from East. That was one (in fact two) of the three differences. I gave this as a win for the finesse and a loss for the squeeze/endplay, but that might have been a wrong approach. And no, I don't think that it should be the theoretical forum, and practical issues are very important. I can quite believe that a good card-reader will sniff out the ending often enough to make running the trumps right.

One final thought is that an aggressive West might have only KQJxx in diamonds. That may throw your calculations out. Given that this particular West might well bid 4D with seven, I am sure he would consider 3D against a FG auction with KQJxx to take up some room. I know a few players who would for sure.

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 16:04, said:

No, because you can go off on lines with the king of spades right by attempting the endplay on East. I assumed that you guess the play half the time where one layout works and one does not.

That's interesting, if you assumed that my line worked half the time where one layout works and one does not, then how can my line make 6 times out of 24 while the spade finesse works 9 times out of 24? That is not possible obviously, are you lying again?

For instance, if the spade finesse works 9 times and you have me guessing that half the time, you have me guessing that 4.5 times. That is not possible. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say you had me making 5 times that the SK is on. That means when the spade finesse was off (15 times), you had me making only 1 time, though you had me "guessing" the endplay line half the time. Really, it's only going to work 1 out of 15 times? Interesting.

If you had me guessing the play half the time where one layout works and one does not, it could not be that the finesse works 9 times and I only make 6 times. I think you are making things up again and being intellectually dishonest. Why did you bother posting this play problem?

Quote

Your line does have the option of playing for the SK to be on in the endgame. If you are going to do that whenever there is no alternative, then both lines are the same.

No, they are not the same. There is a non zero % chance that RHO pitches a diamond in which case I will often have a risk free way to make it in the end game when the spade finesse is off, as my last post indicated. Do you not see that this means coming down to that endgame is clearly superior to taking the finesse immediately? Are you willing to admit that you were wrong?

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 16:17, said:

I confess I made the assumption that declarer never took the spade finesse, and assumed the spade was offside, so the declarer would duck a diamond when there were two out.

But I thought you said this:

Quote

I assumed that you guess the play half the time where one layout works and one does not.

Don't those two statements contradict each other?

Quote

I have gone through the 24 hands again, and playing as you do is at least as good as the spade finesse, provided that you revert to the spade finesse when you are not sure to make the contract otherwise

Ok, great. I agree that if you have the defense always pitching correctly, and me misguessing most of the endings when I don't hook a spade, I should hook the spade at the ending. Do you think anyone thinks otherwise in those conditions? Those are not real life conditions though.

Quote

I am beginning to think ducking the diamond is right, but I have no feel for the percentage of the time West has seven diamonds.

But why do you now think that? You said in your 24 board simulation, ducking the diamond only made five times out of 24, even worse than me misguessing most endings and not taking a spade hook! You also think that you have no edge in figuring out anything from their discarding since the pitch perfectly, so ducking a diamond seems like a horrible line (risking the diamond ruff, and not guessing the squeeze at the end, as you said sometimes you have to play the SA and sometimes the HAK).

Do you now think you have an edge in figuring out stuff from their discards? If that's true then is it possible that you will have an edge in reaching the 5 card ending I outlined and sometimes endplaying them rather than finessing?

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 16:17, said:

For example, one of the hands, board 17, reached this ending:

---

I assumed you threw East in, here, but you now say that you would take the spade finesse when there is no diamond discard from East. That was one of the three differences. I gave this as a win for the finesse and a loss for the squeeze/endplay, but that might have been a wrong approach.

That's interesting since I specifically wrote:

Quote

If there are THREE diamonds outstanding you will pretty much know that LHO has 2 and RHO has 1.

AND

Quote

In real life if you think LHO might be down to 1 diamond or 3 diamonds in this position 100 % of the time because it is the COMMONWEALTH GAMES, well that's absolutely retarded, I'll say 99 % + they won't.

So in fact, based on what I wrote I would of course play a spade in this position. Notice, that this is a push vs the finesse since the spade was on, but if the SK had been on my RIGHT I would make when the SK is off.

I would miss the endplay if LHO was down to 3 diamonds, and RHO had Kx of spades and a heart left. That would be nice double dummy defense by LHO to keep THREE diamonds in that case (as I said in my post, if you bothered to read it and try to learn something about bridge). However, in that case the spade finesse would have been off anyways, so I lost nothing compared to your line. And diamonds would be 7-1 so I didn't lose anything compared to ducking either.

But like I said, if you think you have no edge in reading the cards at the end since they are perfect (and you don't seem to understand what perfect is, on board 17 they forced me to make it based on what I said, best defense would have been for LHO to stiff his diamond very early, in that case I would surely play for 7-1 diamonds and now go down with the SK off. The general theme is that LHO should keep 3 with 7 diamonds and 1 diamond with 6 very early if they want to be perfect).

What happened in the real hand is very typical, LHO immediately pitched down to a doubleton diamond then pitched some other stuff. RHO actually pitched their diamond at some point which I agree is a bad play but will definitely happen a decent amount of the time. But for LHO to hold any number of diamonds that's not 2 is very difficult, especially when that number is 1 and he has to do it early in the play. You will have a substantial edge in real life play against anyone in the world if you assume that they came down to 2 diamonds, and if that is true then you have a massive edge in this endgame. But even if you have doubts then just take the finesse later.

[lamford]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 15:20, said:

Nice to have you back posting in this thread.

If that is the end of the Cold War it is welcomed.

[lamford]

PhantomSac, on 2014-September-12, 16:34, said:

But even if you have doubts then just take the finesse later.

I agree with this, and if you do that, then your line is better assuming that you read the ending more often than you get it wrong. The declarer in question has won some national events, and was partnering PhilKing. I still do not believe how he went off, but it seems from all the commentary on BBO archives that he just miscounted the hearts. It would be nice to get confirmation of this.

[PhantomSac]

@PhilKing

I think the difference in our opinion on ducking vs winning the first trick is our nationality. I would think that 7 diamonds is more common than 6 and you think 7 diamonds would usually bid 4 and 6 would usually bid 3. Knowing your opp definitely helps, ducking is a very nice line if you are confident on that read. England/Australia (PART OF THE CW!) definitely have some of the most aggressive preempting experts compared to NA and other Euros like Italy/France/Poland/etc.

[PhantomSac]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 16:47, said:

I agree with this, and if you do that, then your line is better assuming that you read the ending more often than you get it wrong. The declarer in question has won some national events, and was partnering PhilKing. I still do not believe how he went off, but it seems from all the commentary on BBO archives that he just miscounted the hearts. It would be nice to get confirmation of this.

Just goes to show that people make mistakes, even experts I would hope no one would judge me by my worst hands, there are too many and they are so bad. I think that's true of everyone heh.

[MrAce]

lamford, on 2014-September-12, 16:47, said:

I agree with this, and if you do that, then your line is better assuming that you read the ending more often than you get it wrong. The declarer in question has won some national events, and was partnering PhilKing. I still do not believe how he went off, but it seems from all the commentary on BBO archives that he just miscounted the hearts. It would be nice to get confirmation of this.

You mean Gunnar Hallberg? He is a terrific player as I heard. But that shows he is only a human after all. Or perhaps V.G operator mistake.