[BeakerBoy]

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It's a quick MP 8 board tournament and this is board #1. I pass out the 2NT invite because it's MPs and I don't see anything extra in my hand. Particularly wide open majors after my p's 2NT.

The lead is the 6♣ and I swing that around to my K. I see 8 easy tricks but since it's MPs I decide to see if I can set up a heart for a 9th. I play the Q♥ and it loses to W's King. The bot then plays the K♠! Then the J♠ which I duck. Then the bot plays a low heart to E's A and I end up going down a bajillion for a lovely 6.6% score.

Now, you can question my play. Why not take the top 8 tricks and see if I can get a lucky discard for the 9th? Why not even test clubs to make sure I can take all four clubs? Good questions but I want to focus on the bot play here.

First, E doesn't lead the 5 card spade suit. Understandable. Bots make weird plays in the name of not wanting to give up tricks on the lead. I've learned to accept that. But who bangs down the K from KJ doubleton with no indication that partner has any good spades? And when that wins, and the J wins, who then switches to the hearts? That's the suit I played! The bot lead a club. Why not lead that back? There's no indication I have clubs. E could have the AQ8 that I have. There's no reason on the bidding to know that I don't have anything in either major. If I had either major A, I'd have played the first two tricks the exact same way and W's play would have given me about two overtricks.

So can anyone give a good explanation on why the bot played the way it did? It was such a bs event, I couldn't even concentrate on the rest of the match.

Thanks

[The It]

North is marked with minor suit length from the 2N bid, so a major suit switch is clear, especially seeing all the diamond and club honours in dummy.

Playing another heart straight away might just concede the rest of the tricks, so the only hope to beat it would be to switch to spades, once they both hold, the only real chance of getting partner back in is with a heart.

[Stephen Tu]

Keep in mind that when East is on lead, and you have taken over declarer play for bot North, *South* is visible as dummy, not North.

So the plays make quite a lot of sense given that West can see what South has.

[BeakerBoy]

Stephen Tu, on 2015-December-24, 10:29, said:

Keep in mind that when East is on lead, and you have taken over declarer play for bot North, *South* is visible as dummy, not North.

So the plays make quite a lot of sense given that West can see what South has.

HAHAHA

Holy crap. I have no idea why this is the first time this occurred to me, but yeah. That kinda makes sense now.

Wow. I'm an idiot.

[gszes]

Working with what the opps know (and can infer) is very important when deciding on a LOP. You lament that west makes plays that are illogical. The club 6 lead is either 2nd from nothing or 4th best. It is impossible that it was 4th best because west can "see" (after u win the club K) that east has at most 1 club higher than the 6. The bidding was also a strong indicator you have some club length (skipping !D !H !S and going directly to 2n). Since you have "stuff" in the other suits the possession of the club K means you most likely are limited to queens everywhere else so the robot can actually get a pretty darn accurate assessment as soon as you play the heart Q.

Now here is the kicker you know the opening lead is not 4th best since the only card combination for that is JT96 and the club 6 is not going to be led from that holding. That means there is a huge chance west can figure out the club lead also. If you realize that you will see the danger of playing hearts before trying to take 8 tricks in the minors:)

[zillahandp]

I can xplain the 6club lead esp when east knows you do nt have four spades, all the rest is glaringly obvious and on js presmably east would play the ten to show his heart entry, sry all ypur fault they gave you the contract and you gave it back, lesson leant?

[zillahandp]

Sry cant xplain club lead