According to DF West can make 11 tricks in spades but East can only make 10 tricks.
A first glance suggests this is probably right. North can lead a diamond to establish South's king, or lead a heart to give an immediate ruff.
And then you realise that this would be a (possible) reason that East could make more tricks than West, not the other way around. With East playing the hand it appears that South is almost endplayed at trick 1, so how can East make fewer tricks?
I'll leave it to the reader to work out why :)
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5 comments:
Played from West, declarer can afford to duck a C lead(assuming a small one is led to the Q). From E he cannot as the J is an entry to play a D through his Ax D. The AC is a key entry to dummy, so the C trick needs to be set up first. C
a heart or diamond lead or spade lead from north can be finessed, and the club loser goes away, so you lose only, say, the kd and qs. 11 tricks.
A club lead from north can be safely ducked if it leaves south on lead, if north leads teh j of clubs, it must be won with the ace, otherwise there is the potential to score jc kd and qs.
similarly a low club from south givers south the potential to score jc kd and qs, the difference is that now niether ducking nor winning prevents north form having a club entry, whereas the jc from north can be won with the A and the ten prevents north from ever regaining the lead.
Interestingly the only way to 11 tricks from a club lead from north, or kc lead from south, is to win the ace on the second round and take a first round finesse of the th, south can win but he is ruffing with is natural spade trick, and the diamond loser will go away on the 4th heart winner.
Its an interesting hand, as declarer is unlikely to appreciate the danger of a heart ruff on the kc lead, and may well win the ace and take a first round spade finesse, since a 2-2 spade break will always hold your losers to 1s 1d and 1c, as the 9s will allow a late entry to dummy to pick up any 4-1 heart break for a diamond discard. On the layout this will allow the defence to get 3 tricks, while also allowing declarer a chance to go off if they play a club to the J and a heart back. At this point if delcarer should carelessly rise with the Kh and get this ruffed, then he can never establish a trick for a diamond discard and must go -1.
While this looks like very poor play, it is from a common vein of declarer play, declarer has already found the optimal play for his contract, having already ruled out 5-0 breaks as "make-able" he may forget to factor in the fact that he must now cater to a break that he has already excluded from his analysis. Clearly on the layout he need only play low or insert the ten to insure ten tricks. Failure to adapt your plan to a change in circumstance is one of the most common reasons that declarers go off unnecessarily :)
Phil
I agree that Deep Finesse is never wrong, but that statement must be clarified by the parameters. If you use Dealmaster Pro to generate hand you can use the inbuilt Deep Finesse to calculate the makeable contracts. BUT there are parameters, options include a quick mode and also a mode that does not check for the best opening lead. Dealmaster Pro will only guarantee the makeable contracts if you use the FULL Deep Finesse option, which takes my computer about half an hour for 28 boards.
For those who may be a little confused by pattayabridge's comment, if Deep Finesse states that a certain number of tricks can be made, then it is always correct.
However Deep Finesse will not always examine every contract, so if Deep Finesse does not state the number of tricks for a contract, it means either (i) you cannot make 7 or more tricks or (ii) it has not examined the contract.
For example, Deep Finesse will not normally examine a 4-2 trump fit.
Ted, a late but very diligent reader, has pointed out that I was inaccurate in the above comment.
The Deep Finesse product will analyse any contract you wish. However the implementation of the Deep Finesse product used by Dealmaster Pro is limited to 'usual' contracts - for example, it does not check contracts with a 5-card trump fit.
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