JTx
A9xx
Tx
AQJx

KQx
8xxx
Qx
Txxx

Bidding goes:
1C from partner, dbl, I bid 1H, 3D by LHO, 3H by partner, all pass.

Diamond to A, spade back for K and A, LHO cashes Kd and plays a small club, I duck, Kc on the right and club back. Now I fear a club ruff, so I play Ah and another heart. They are 4-1, RHO cashes KQJh and plays back a diamond to LHO who claims the rest. 3H-7. They made 5H in the 4-1 fit lol

K
K87x
xx
QJ9xxxx

AJxx
AQJT
AKQ
Kx

6H is the contract. They lead a diamond. You take and cash Ah, LHO shows out!! You play Kc, LHO grabs first round and plays back a diamond.
What now? What distribution(s) does RHO need to have for you to make this slam despite the 5-0 split?

It seems nobody is interested to give this a shot, so below is my analysis

Looks like

Instructive hand thx for sharing, agree w your analysis

This is reminiscent of a Victor Mollo story. I don't have the books anymore, so I can't look it up.

Bridge in the Menagerie was made free during the pandemic

https://www.bridgeshop.com.au/carepa..._Menagerie.pdf

The hand at page 150 is the classic

‘Curious hand,’ observed Oscar the ‘Owl’, our Senior Kibitzer. ‘Both sides can make four hearts. Very unusual.’

But there are also some absurd distributions in the book.

I promise this will be my last darn it dad post. I completely shrugged off dad ruffing a good trick tonight and didn't care.

But darn it dad

♠J762
♥A762
♦6
♣AK43

W/R dad opens it goes

1C-(1D)-P-P-P

Guess I am done trap passing with dad, I had

♠A43
♥T84
♦KQJ93
♣Q2

Trap pass is my favorite bid though

Thanks!

Mollo is a genius. I still have various of his books

Richard Pavlicek also has a fertile mind when it comes to these types of hands. He made a hand were par was 3S making 140, BOTH ways.

You have this excellent hand:
Txxx
J9xx
Qxx
Jx

RHO opens 1 and with your side being quiet, they bid 1-1NT-6

You lead a small

Dummy is:
QJxx
Ax
AKx
KTxx

First trick goes to the A in dummy, the leader draws two rounds of trumps with his AQ, Plays A and another . Partner grabs the King and plays back a trump.
What do you discard?

\\

It would be nice if you gave us some signals here.

We know declarer has the following high cards

S A
H Q
D
C AQ

We can count 11 tricks, 5 club tricks and 2 winners in each of the off suits.

Let's say declarer is 2434. We can't pitch a spade, declarer will ruff out our 4th spade. We can't pitch a heart, for the same reason. We would have to pitch a diamond and hope partner has the Jack. If declarer is 2344 we can safely pitch a heart. If declarer is 3334 we can safely pitch a heart. If declarer is 3244 we can pitch a heart.

I don't think my computer partner signals much, other than high is encouraging on my lead.

It then just comes down to cases. How often will declarer have 4 hearts vs having the Jack of Diamonds. My guess is that the heart pitch is percentage, but, really, this is why playing with Bots is not 'real bridge'. Bridge is a beautiful game when partners can cooperate to get these defenses right, whenever it is possible.

I guess Bot bridge will help you refine your sense of probabilities, since that appears to be all you have to go on here.

The correct play was to discard a diamond. I discarded a spade and declarer with Ax finessed the K and ruffed a spade high.

At the end I uninstalled the bridge app. It was painfully bad at everything and the 1/10 interesting hand couldn't compensate for the other 90% of ridiculous nonsense

If I want to play decent bridge on my phone, what should I get?

This pair must have gotten banned for a while. But suddenly they popped into a tournament I was playing today with a 79.39% game...sigh...

I've created a BBO account
Actually I managed to get a pretty cool alias that was still available: OnlineBot.

For starters I'm refreshing my declarer skills and going through all the Expert and World-Class Solitaire Bridge Master hands.

I'm not sure if I agree with the solution of World Class hand B14.
Bidding goes 5D by RHO, 5S by me, 6S by partner, dbl by LHO.

LHO leads Qs and this is the hand:

98
AQT9
A4
K5432

AK65432
K432
32
-

RHO follows and discards a diamond when you cash Ks, so LHO has a trump trick with QJT.

Now the solution provided is that you need to ruff 5 clubs, using 4 hearts and a diamond entry (overtaking Kh with Ah and finessing in hearts twice). LHO ends up ruffing his partner's diamond in trick 13.

The solution I found was playing RHO for 9 diamonds and having a 1-X-9-X distribution. With at most 3 hearts in RHO, LHO must have at least two hearts, so after two rounds of trumps, you play Kh and a heart to the A. Now you ruff a club and that will teach you the entire distribution of RHO. He can be 1390, 1291, 1192 or 1093 (the first and last are unlikely, he'd given a Lightner dbl). Now you know how many hearts LHO has, you eliminate them and play a trump. LHO only has clubs left and must bring you the Kc, while you have Ad as entry. This play works irrespective of where Jh is located. If LHO has three hearts, diamonds can even be 8-1, as you will keep a heart entry for Kc

Is my solution so much more inferior?

The Word Class problem C14 has a ridiculously long solution, while the solution is actually super simple and for me, the problem is actually advanced/expert level, rather than world class.

xx
AQxx
9xx
KJ98

A
32
AKQJTx
xxxx

You are in 5D after LHO has shown 5/5 or better in the majors and RHO has supported spades.
LHO leads Ac and shifts to a low spade, obviously showing a bare Ac. So RHO has QTx left of clubs.

The heart finesse must be right and will be right almost always, due to the bidding.

The solution is supersimple.

I'm just trying to follow your solution, but not sure I'm missing something obvious.

As long as RHO is 1=x=9=y you're ok. In the case they have only 8 diamonds, why can't LHO exit with a diamond when thrown in with a spade? If the hearts are 3-2 or 2-3 it's fine but if LHO specifically has 1=4=1=7 does your line fail?

Yes, my line will fail if LHO has 5 red cards or more. If LHO turns up with less than 4 hearts, I can cash Ad and endplay him with trumps. He will only have clubs left. I can reach Kc through the 4th heart.

The suggested BBO line will fail if RHO has Jx(x) of hearts.

Not sure how close these solutions are, really.

Just been doing a test stream on twitch on intobridge, something I picked up on on Pete's Youtube earlier this week, which has some sort of "play ranked" feature which basically puts you into a board a match situation against a similarly ranked opponent based on an Elo-esque system. Seems an interesting concept, not seen anything online which has tried to incorporate any sort of sensible ranking system, volume of players seems low but it appears free at least for now so may be worth messing about with

Quick honest rant...there is a very real chance Atakdog becomes my most disliked person in the history of bridge since he says he was the major person behind getting all major events switched to 10 am and 3 pm

So ignore the suggestion I made above - they appear to have a very, VERY limited number of boards available and will reuse opponents frequently. Watched Pete do a session of this earlier this morning, decided I'd play a few hands, ended up stopping at two as they were the exact same boards he played, and at least in the second one it was also the same opponent