[JavaBean]

A94
KJ632

The safety play for four tricks is fairly well known, and fortunately at the table that's all I had to produce. But I started thinking: what's best for five tricks? Or if you can ruff once in dummy? The question looks pretty simple, and maybe the obvious answers are right, but as I pondered it seemed to me that it got sorta complicated and would be worth thinking through even if no "new" knowledge were gained by the bridge community.

[Trumpace]

I don't see anything better than A and low to J.

[Phil]

Well since you are missing the 10, you can't pick up Qxxx on. Shortening dummy doesn't seem to matter.

So playing for the drop picks up QT,Q7, Q6, or Q5 off, playing for the finesse picks up QT7. QT6, QT5. Q76, Q75 and Q65.

I suppose if you are going to play for the drop, you have the option of playing the K first, and if the Q drops, you can finesse the 9, however, this is a free f/c for RHO from QT in essence. Shortening dummy would matter here - is this what you had in mind?

If we had the 7 (instead of the 6), we have additional options. I'll leave that to others as an exercise.

[JavaBean]

What I actually had in mind was leading up to the jack without cashing the ace first; just as you can't pick up Qxxx onside, you can't pick up Txxx onside either. But low to the jack, followed by a finesse of the nine if East inserts an honor, allows you to pick up either stiff honor with RHO, at the expense of QT tight with RHO, and there aren't any interesting falsecards for them that I can see.

That was my thinking, anyway, but I realized later that you also give up QT tight with LHO, since whichever honor he drops under the ace you have no choice but to play for the drop. So cashing the ace first gains on two 3-2 splits and loses to two 4-1 splits. Looks like cashing the ace is still best, but if you have any reason to believe LHO has length in the suit that might be enough to tip the scales.

I don't remember what I thought was interesting about being able to ruff in dummy; I guess that's what I get for thinking about card combinations at seven in the morning. Maybe it was just that (until my later re-analysis) the lines for all three scenarios were different that struck my fancy.

Edit: It looks like Phil thought that in part C I meant this was the trump suit and you might want to ruff something before playing on the suit. I may have been unclear; I meant that this is a side suit, and if you win the first three tricks you can ruff the fourth.

[Phil]

If you play low toward the J, RHO does have a cute f/c with QTx by flying Q inducing the finesse against the presumed Txxx in LHOs hand

There's some cat and mouse here, and I love these combos, because the f/c from QTx seems unlikely since declarer really should have the dreaded J8xxx (where the Q would be a disaster) and not KJxxx since he didn't cash the A. The defender might be able to work this out from the bidding.

Furthermore the f/c from QTx needs to be found in tempo, so I would read the Q at face value and finesse.

[cherdanno]

JavaBean, on Aug 2 2010, 01:05 PM, said:

That was my thinking, anyway, but I realized later that you also give up QT tight with LHO, since whichever honor he drops under the ace you have no choice but to play for the drop.

If LHO drops the T under the Ace on the first round, you should still finesse, as otherwise you are giving up on all Tx-Qxx combinations with LHO falsecarding (and that falsecard is much easier to find than Phil's QTx falsecard).

[JavaBean]

Phil, on Aug 2 2010, 02:48 PM, said:

Furthermore the f/c from QTx needs to be found in tempo, so I would read the Q at face value and finesse.

Good point. The queen is hard to find, but the ten ought to work just as well against my "improvement" and might not be so hard to find.

cherdano said:

If LHO drops the T under the Ace on the first round, you should still finesse, as otherwise you are giving up on all Tx-Qxx combinations with LHO falsecarding

Hmmm. So if LHO is clever enough to falsecard from Tx, but RHO isn't going to try anything funny with QTx, is it actually better to play low to the jack immediately?