Safety first
This is one that came up at a partnership bidding table (we were practicing for an upcoming tournament with imps scoring):
♠ 3
♥ A
♦ JT984
♣ AKJ632
♠ AKT4
♥ K95
♦ 653
♣ T98
The auction is irrelevant, we ended up in 3NT played by South. There are some blockages, and if opponents start with a ♠ lead, all communication has been destroyed. So what are your thoughts?
A 4-0 ♣ split is deadly, but any 3-1 split you should try to handle. Meanwhile you need to get to dummy after unblocking ♥A, and you'll need to get back to your ♣s as well, without losing control of the hand! Any plans?
After taking ♠A there's 1 line which is safer than all others: you start by unblocking ♥A and you play a low ♣ to dummy! Whoever has ♣Q gets a trick, but 9 tricks are assured: 2♠s, 2♥s and 5♣s. Opponents can't make 5 tricks before us, because the ♦s will only produce 3 tricks, plus ♣Q. 3NT laydown.
Note that even if ♣s are 2-2 and you're planning to cash ♣AK, unblocking ♥A makes sure the ♣s block (you can either stay in the hand or go to dummy, but that's the last thing you'll do)! So you would need to cash ♠AK, which is full of risks, and you can only get to 9 tricks anyway...
Only one question remains: how do you play this at MatchPoints? Initially I thought you can make 10 tricks only if you catch ♣Q singleton, all other splits make you go down after cashing ♣A. So I thought you should still go for the safety of 9 tricks. However, Michael (see the comments) got me to realise I was wrong, cashing is better in more than 50% of the hands (unless my calculations were wrong).
6 reactions:
I think you're missing something, Free. You don't care about communications so long as you still have a club left in hand after they're set up. Oppo can take a maximum of 3 diamonds and 1 club. Ducking the first club is a nice safety play to guarantee 9 tricks, but it only gains on 4% of hands (Q7xx offside) and frequently costs an IMP. At pairs, you can make 10 tricks 53% of the time by bashing down the clubs from the top and hoping - you might go off if it fails, but that's pairs for you.
If clubs are 3-1 (Q probably not singleton) and you cash AK, you give away a club while keeping HA as an entry right? So what if they establish their Spades? You'll have 5 clubs, 2 spades and 1 heart, going down. Perhaps the ST was quite high, but they can always switch the lead using diamonds.
Btw, you can't handle Q7xx offside. If LHO ducks the first club, you can't cash your Major suit winners. So you depend on opponents leading your suits again. But they can establish their spades, very similar situation btw.
You do indeed go down if clubs are 3-1 and you cash the AK but that's the risk you take at pairs. You'll make 10 tricks more than 50% of the time at the cost of going off about 40% of the time.
You can handle Q7xx offside - you just duck a second club.
You may be right, I'm not great with percentages so I didn't calculate them. Lets see if I'm right (correct me if I'm wrong please, I'm always eager to learn):
- 2-2 splits happen 40.7% of the time. 3-1 splits with the Q stiff is another 12.8%. This adds up to 53.5% for 10 tricks, 46.5% for down one if you start with AK.
- 4-0 split with Qxxx offside is 4.8%, in which we both go down. In all other situations I'll make exactly 9 tricks, 95.2%.
So, small to the T obviously is the best line in imps. In MP you have more than 50% to score better than my line, so I guess you're right. :-)
Almost! :-)
If I cash the CA and RHO shows out, I can recover by ducking the next one and still make 9 tricks (5%). Also, your line of ducking the first club works 100% of the time. If someone has all four clubs you can duck twice to force them to win the Queen while you have an entry.
Interesting hand!
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