[thepossum]

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From the latest Ken Berg memorial. Sadly I missed the overtrick

The winning play was of course to lead the king then small. How did people know?

I am just wondering if that is a basic play I should know

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I would say, that since you are missing the 9, the natural way
of finessing the Q is King, followed low to J/T.

If you have the 9 instead of the 8, you could argue, that it
is the same, it would be, but still playing King followed by
low to the J/T still looks more natural.

I dont think there is a huge difference, which way to go, except
success.

You could also try to get some interference out of the opening
lead, but given that we are talking about handling the trump suit,
it seems risky.


With kind regards
Marlowe

[thepossum]

P_Marlowe, on 2025-November-11, 03:52, said:

Hi,

I would say, that since you are missing the 9, the natural way
of finessing the Q is King, followed low to J/T.

If you have the 9 instead of the 8, you could argue, that it
is the same, it would be, but still playing King followed by
low to the J/T still looks more natural.

I dont think there is a huge difference, which way to go, except
success.

You could also try to get some interference out of the opening
lead, but given that we are talking about handling the trump suit,
it seems risky.


With kind regards
Marlowe

Thanks. I have looked at it over and over and the majority play was the King then small - but I never base anything on confirmation bias. At least I played one high honour to cover the singleton Queen possibility. I would be curious at the probabilities. Next time I will play the high honour first and it will be the other way. Maybe I should test it with a DD analyser and see which way it goes. I did not manage much inference from the auction or lead and thought it was too risky in a slam to do anything else first

EDIT I did just try it through one Bridge analysis and it shows the percentage slightly higher for the way I did it. Not sure why. Not much difference. I certainly cannot assess which is correct though. Beyond my experience. In fact out of three possible leads, King, 8 or small, Small was top, closely followed by 8, and slightly last was King.

I could try and learn from the result, the larger number of people who played the Kinng first and the expert advice above - I'm not much of one for probability plays that close. I often play randomly on the drop with 4 trumps out too - gut feel - the risk of great surprise or upset from partner

I just remember a while back simulating some simple distributions and being surprised how many samples until you got anywhere close to theory

[Stephen Tu]

It's a tossup where the Q is, because you have no clues from the bidding or some severe suit break showing up from the lead. On 3-2 breaks you'll breakeven either way in the long run. But the best play is K first, because you can pick up Q9xx on your right, but not Q9xx on your left. Over the long run you'll profit making 7 when it's Q9xx on the right. It also allows you to make when Q fifth is on your right.

You play the K first, not low to the J, because having decided to play E for the Q, you want to get the freebie of picking off the singleton Q with west without loss, by playing K first.

You can't really use double dummy analysis to analyze this because double dummy knows where the Q is. You have to analyze it in a single dummy manner and just assume you are guessing the Q only 50%. Since it's a tossup, you go the way that you can pick up the 4-1 break.

[thepossum]

Stephen Tu, on 2025-November-12, 01:24, said:

It's a tossup where the Q is, because you have no clues from the bidding or some severe suit break showing up from the lead. On 3-2 breaks you'll breakeven either way in the long run. But the best play is K first, because you can pick up Q9xx on your right, but not Q9xx on your left. Over the long run you'll profit making 7 when it's Q9xx on the right. It also allows you to make when Q fifth is on your right.

You play the K first, not low to the J, because having decided to play E for the Q, you want to get the freebie of picking off the singleton Q with west without loss, by playing K first.

You can't really use double dummy analysis to analyze this because double dummy knows where the Q is. You have to analyze it in a single dummy manner and just assume you are guessing the Q only 50%. Since it's a tossup, you go the way that you can pick up the 4-1 break.

When I say double dummy. It is single dummy with repeated DD under the covers. I could not tell you how many thousands of DDs the analysis was based on - and maybe the distribution is very skewed and means are meaningless. Quite a few I guess. But yes I need to constrain the play more - not sure if I have the time. So I acknowedge the DD/SD analysis was not valid in this case. I just put it into a Bridge program and it plays a spade first. Then some cross ruffing of spades and hearts and then plays for the drop - sorry about the miselading and meaningless analysis I will try and constrain the play and compare.

But if there is a clear majority play on such small probability differences I am happy occasionally to go against the field

Quick question though. If I lead to the Ace and then finesse back do I not cover the optionn of a singleton Queen somwehere too?

I am very curious at the majority (at the table) view and the majority advice above. Will take note

[Stephen Tu]

thepossum, on 2025-November-12, 21:37, said:

But if there is a clear majority play on such small probability differences I am happy occasionally to go against the field

Do what you want, but you are giving up about 7.6% to the field that way in the long run. If you want to win consistently, you don't want to be fighting the probabilities in most cases. There are times to go slightly against the odds, like in a team match where you are far behind in last segment and need some swings to catch up, or if you find yourself in a very abnormal contract and need cards to lie a certain way so that you can beat the normal contract. But if you find yourself in a contract most others should be in, you usually want to go with the field if it knows what it is doing. The "normal best" play is the normal best play for a reason. Good players will just do the normal thing unless they have a good reason not to, they aren't happy to go against the field if doing so is anti-percentage. They are happy to go against the field if it is plus-percentage (e.g. taking finesse against Q in 9 cd fit playing a preemptor to be short, in a field of beginners who religiously follow "9-never" not knowing the exceptions to the "rule").

Quote

Quick question though. If I lead to the Ace and then finesse back do I not cover the optionn of a singleton Queen somwehere too?

Sure, you don't lose to stiff Q in either side. But the king first doesn't either, so you aren't gaining in those cases. You gain if Qx or Qxx is on the left, or the stiff 9 is on the right, by playing to the ace and running the J. But the Qx/Qxx on the left is canceled out by the times Qx/Qxx are on your right. And Q9xx on your right is 3x more frequent than stiff 9 on your right, which is where you lose your ground, in addition to Q9xxx on your right. (Q9xxx on left you can't avoid 2 losers, on your right you can hold it to one).

[thepossum]

I just reran my attempt at single dummy with 10000 or so hands, constrainng the play up to the lead on second trick.
King scored 12.6 tricks
Small scored 12.8 tricks
I guess I should work out the distribution and not the means

I have no idea if my other investigation getting QPlus Demo to play the hand was top play - it played all these side suits and cross ruffs first

regarding scores on this hand 6 D+1 did not score that well. Those who found NT or a 50% grand had top scores of course - it cost me 11% compared to the correct finesse. But imagine if NT was not there
I find those types of calculations hard

[Cyberyeti]

thepossum, on 2025-November-12, 23:11, said:

I just reran my attempt at single dummy with 10000 or so hands, constrainng the play up to the lead on second trick.
King scored 12.6 tricks
Small scored 12.8 tricks
I guess I should work out the distribution and not the means

I have no idea if my other investigation getting QPlus Demo to play the hand was top play - it played all these side suits and cross ruffs first

regarding scores on this hand 6 D+1 did not score that well. Those who found NT or a 50% grand had top scores of course - it cost me 11% compared to the correct finesse. But imagine if NT was not there
I find those types of calculations hard

6N is also more likely to make the overtrick as you can delay playing the diamonds. On this hand you are more likely to make the overtrick in 6♣ as again you can delay playing the diamonds, meaning there are also squeeze layouts that will get you there. You can actually count 6+2+2+2 in NT if S asks so he should do so, and should be bidding 6N or since partner has at least 5 spades to the K, 7♣ which would allow you to ruff out the spades on a non heart lead if they're 4-3 and possibly other holdings if he has the J or 10 and take the diamond finesse or play a squeeze if they're not. There's no law against partner having one of the major suit Qs either. I really don't like the 3N bid, you don't have the heart stop you're likely to have and you have plenty of extras, you will be stopping in game opposite many hands that are making slams. Also it might influence partner to think you have ♥Q and overbid.

[thepossum]

Cyberyeti, on 2025-November-13, 02:03, said:

6N is also more likely to make the overtrick as you can delay playing the diamonds. On this hand you are more likely to make the overtrick in 6♣ as again you can delay playing the diamonds, meaning there are also squeeze layouts that will get you there. You can actually count 6+2+2+2 in NT if S asks so he should do so, and should be bidding 6N or since partner has at least 5 spades to the K, 7♣ which would allow you to ruff out the spades on a non heart lead if they're 4-3 and possibly other holdings if he has the J or 10 and take the diamond finesse or play a squeeze if they're not. There's no law against partner having one of the major suit Qs either. I really don't like the 3N bid, you don't have the heart stop you're likely to have and you have plenty of extras, you will be stopping in game opposite many hands that are making slams. Also it might influence partner to think you have ♥Q and overbid.

I do not like my 3NT bid either. Could have killed an auction prematurely too - but at least it accurately descibed my points if not the power of the hand
As people can see many of the considerations are a bit beyond my NB level