Re: Deep Finesse gets this right

On Apr 23, 7:43=A0pm, Steve Willner <swill...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> But it's harder when you can't see all the cards....
>
> =A0 =A0Dealer East
> =A0 =A0NS Vul
> =A0 =A0IMP Pairs
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0North
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0K75
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0AK62
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A076432
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A03
> =A0 =A0West =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 East
> =A0 =A0JT62 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 -
> =A0 =A0QT97 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 J4
> =A0 =A0QT =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 AKJ8
> =A0 =A0764 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0AQJ9852
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0South
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0AQ9843
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0853
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A095
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0KT
> =A0 =A0West =A0 North =A0East =A0 South
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A01C! =A0 =A01S
> =A0 =A0Pass! =A02S =A0 =A0 3C =A0 =A0 Pass
> =A0 =A0Pass =A0 3H =A0 =A0 Pass =A0 3S
> =A0 =A0Dbl =A0 =A0All Pass
>
> 1C was strong and artificial; West's pass showed any bad hand (less than
> a decent 5-count). =A0NS have no two-suited methods over the strong
club;
> their bidding was natural.
>
> Q1. What do you think of the bidding, especially by EW?

West's double is very hungry especially at imps.

>
> West led C-4 (count leads). =A0East played C-A and three rounds of
> diamonds, declarer ruffing with S-9 and West discarding H-7 (low
> encourages). =A0Declarer drew three rounds of trumps ending in dummy and
> ruffed a diamond; the only additional trick for the defense was West's
> high trump.
>
> Deep Finesse says the double-dummy result is 8 tricks. =A0As far as I
can
> tell, the defense achieves this only by switching to hearts before
> playing the third round of diamonds.
>
> Q2. Can defenders beat the contract without a peek? =A0How? =A0Assign
the
> blame, if you will.

The defense is only going to matter if you can only take two diamonds,
a club, and a trump trick. In that case, where is the setting trick
coming from?

Clearly a heart.

What is declarer going to do to shed a heart loser?

Clearly try and set up diamonds.

What can you do about it?

Try to kill declarer's entries on dummy to the diamonds.

What if declarer has something like:  H 109x?

You are not going to set 3S by avoiding a heart lead. Because declarer
can now set up diamonds for a heart pitch.

Eric Leong