🚀 go-pugleaf

For the record, there is a practical application to
the "simple statistics problem" discussion that has
been going on on the net.  Those of you who played
in the Distric 3 Summer Regional (Meadowlands
Hilton, East Rutherford, NJ) Friday night side game
may remember hand 22:

Bd: 22        S-742
Dlr: E        H-A852
Vul:E-W       D-T74
	      C-Q84

S-KT                    S-AQJ
H-K76                   H-T4
D-QJ932                 D-86
C-T72                   C-AK9653

              S-98653
              H-QJ93
              D-AK5
              C-J

The bidding: E    S    W    N
             1C   P    1NT  P
             2NT  P    3NT  P
             P    P

Opening lead:  2 of Hearts.  

You win the K of Hearts and lead a club to the ace.
South drops the Jack.  Plan the play.

**************************************************

The actual play:
North lead the natural 2 of Hearts and West (me) won
with the king.  There are two ways to make this
contract:  play with extremely poor opponents or
immediately run 6 club tricks and 3 spade tricks.
I choose plan 2 and attacked clubs first to use the
spades for entries.

If the 2 of Hearts is 4th highest, the hearts will
split 4-4, so that gives no added information on the
hand distribution.  I can lead a spade to the ace to
see if spades split 8-0, but that is not likely to
be useful.  Therefore, all I know is that there is a
40% chance that clubs will split 2-2, and my best
chance to win all of the clubs is to play the A and
the K and hope.  So, I lead a low club to the A and
low and behold, South drops the Jack.  Now the Law
of Restricted Choice (the 3 cabinet rule) comes in
play.  The chances of South starting with a
singleton J are almost double the chances of South
having a doubleton JQ (11 to 6, to be exact) and any
false cards by South are rather useless (think about
it), so I cross back to my hand with a spade and
finess the 9 of clubs.  What do you know, it works,
and I get a top board.

A note about the bidding.  The 1NT response was
because I have a thing against minor suits and
wanted to protect my kings against probable major
suit lead in NT.  The 2NT rebid is a little light in
HCP, but reasonable in view of the nice club suit
and solid spades.

Ken Lee
5941ux!kfl

a long reasonably strong Club suit and solid
spades.