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Thursday, April 15, 2004

Hilton Head Island, SC

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In last Sunday's oneNT enewsletter, I submitted the following Play of the Hand question:

	Lead Q♠		3Nt	Taking your tricks?
.	Dummy	.	8 Winners	In this 3Nt contract, you have 8 (quick) winners: 2 spade winners, 1 heart winner, no immediate diamond winners and 5 club winners. You only need to develop 1 one trick to make your contract (9 tricks). With the ♦KJ764 in Dummy and ♦1098 in your hand it looks very promising that you can finesse against the ♦Q. All it takes is for the ♦Q to be on-side (50%) and you can probably take 12 tricks putting Declarer's 2♠ and 7♥ on Dummy 4th and 5th diamond regardless of where the ♦A sits. However, if the ♦Q is off-side (50%) and your RHO returns his partner's spade lead the opponents can knockout your last spade control and possibly win the ♦AQ, a heart trick (either the ♥K or ♥J) and some number of spades setting your contract. If however, you win the ♥A and lead to the ♥QJ you can promote one of your heart honors for your 9th trick and make your contract 100% of the time. Do you risk a 100% certainty of making your contract for a 50% possibility of making significant up-tricks or going down in your contract. What do you think?
♠	A5
♥	QJ3
♦	KJ764
♣	942
.	Declarer	.	Winners
♠	K62	♠	2
♥	A7	♥	1
♦	1098	♦	0
♣	AKQJ10	♣	5

Congratulations to Gary Donner (HHI), Marty Nathan (Atlanta) and John Segal (Connecticut) for each submitting the following analysis to the Taking Your Tricks question.

First you have to consider if the field will be in 3Nt? If you thought only a few teams would be in game, then making game alone will give you a good result. With 28 points between the partnership and lots of good intermediates like south's 1098 in diamonds, you have to believe the field will be in 3Nt so you have to make game to have a decent result.

In an IMPs competition like KOs or Swiss Teams, a non-vulnerable game is worth 10 IMPs and 3 up tricks only adds 1 IMP. Vulnerable, the scoring differential is even worse - a vulnerable game is worth 12 IMPs and 90 points in up tricks does not add anything to your score. Any gamble for up tricks is not worth the risk in team competition or IMPs scoring. In IMPs competition declarer would make the play to promote a heart honor while still having control in other suits and take his 9 winners, making his contract 100% of the time.

In matchpoint competition the answer is not the same. Each of the three (Gary, Marty and John) pointed out that while it is a 50% chance that you would lose the finesse against the ♦Q (i.e., the ♦Q is on your right) it is not really a 50% chance of going down. If you lose the finesse to the ♦Q, spades still might split 4-4 between your opponents and you can still make your game with the added opportunity of making up tricks. Each also pointed that you can hedge your odds by ducking a spade (either on the first round or second round if RHO wins the finesse and returns a spade) in hopes that if the spades do split 5-3 that the ♦A does not sit in the same hand with the 5 spades. In this later strategy you 50% likely to take 12 tricks, maybe 30% likely to make your contract (spades split 4-4 or the ♦A not in the same hand as 5 spades) and only 20% likely to go down.

Thanks to everyone who responded and a special thanks to Gary, Marty and John.

Palmetto Pre-Empts

I have now added the SC Unit 160 newsletter Palmetto Pre-Empts to the 1NT (oneNT) web site. You can reference, read or print any of the last year's Palmetto Pre-Empts ... from the Home page go to Library or click on the following link ... http://www.onent.com/library.htm ... there is not much in the Library yet ... you should not have a hard time finding the Palmetto Pre-Empts if you can find the library.

Remember Bridge should be fun!

Fred E. Ferguson, Editor

fred@oneNT.com

843.363.6416

Hilton Head Island, SC

April 15, 2004 ... oneNT is a private enewsletter devoted to bridge technical issues, news, education and opinion. Published from Hilton Head Island, SC, oneNT is emailed weekly if the editor is not off playing in some tournament. Although certain internet service providers consider oneNT to be junk email (spam), it is not intended as unsolicited email. If you do not wish to receive oneNT, send an email to fred@oneNT.com and call me a few names and I will remove you from future emailings.