Thursday, December 20, 2007

From the Home Game...

I'm trying to get more home games going, getting friends together from the chicago area and playing for a few hours on a weekend afternoon. Hopefully we can end up doing it as regularly as once a month (or more). I see it as a great way to work on one's game--we are all pretty serious players and it takes a lot of focus to keep up. To me it is much more useful practice than a club game where many of your mistakes go unpunished...and it's far more enjoyable. We just played this past Sunday and this hand came up--
I forget the colors, but we were playing imps and at our table the auction went 1 Spade by west, 2 Diamonds by North, pass, 3 Notrump by South (me). Here are the north-south hands:
K
Axx
AJxxxx
8xx

AQxx
KTx
Kx
QJT7
the opening lead of a small heart went around to my ten. I played the king of diamonds, west pitching a spade. fortunately, things were still under control--there are 9 easy tricks by knocking out the two club honors, which i did and basically claimed the game. With every IMP being important (or suppose you are playing matchpoints), though, what is the real correct way to play this contract for all your tricks? I'll send out another post later with the rest of the hands and my opinions.

3 comments:

Becker said...

I'm home in Milwaukee for the weekend and am not that tired so I figured I would put in my 2 cents on this hand. As far as I can tell, this hand is cold for 10 tricks in notrump after the ten of hearts wins the first trick. Clubs will be 3-3 or the hand with the long clubs will be subject to a strip and endplay (no this is not a porn site). The problem: to execute the endplay you have to know which hand has the long clubs. Some table feel may be available...you can play a spade to the king and a club. Assuming this loses, you win the heart return on the table and play another club. Regardless of what has happened, after two rounds of clubs you have to form your opinion about the hand. If West is to be endplayed, you play a diamond to the ace, forcing a heart discard from a probable original 5-4-0-4 distribution. Now a heart to hand and spades will endplay West to lead clubs from Kx to your Tx at trick 12. If East is to be endplayed you leave dummy's diamond tenace intact and play your heart and spade winners forcing the hand down to Qx of diamonds and two clubs. You play a club and wait for the AJ of diamonds to win the last two tricks. I know all this has been wordy and may not have shed a whole lot of light on this interesting hand...I never claimed analysis as one of my strong points. At the table, the endplay against East would have worked--West had: KT9xxx QJxxx - Ax

JonathanW said...

you gave N the sk by mistake (?) in the original post

JonathanW said...

no i guess the typo was in the follow-up? but could west open without sk?

Assuming original hand you can endplay E regardless of distribution and you'll have total count after establishing c trick then cashing majors. only prob if west clever enough to duck club, maybe you must guess if he has akx or ak9x before cashing...but best guess he has 5 hearts so at most 3 clubs.