Some hand are just too difficult

Brighton - Day 7

Today saw some events coming to an end, or at least the end of the middle as Paul has it on The Beer Card blog. The Senior's Swiss Teams completed, the final midweek evening competition was the Mixed Pairs Championship, and the final of the midweek knockout teams is tomorrow afternoon. That just leaves some open pairs and speedball events, and the marathon that is the Swiss Teams.

When a TD has to produce an assigned score, he has to identify a number of potential results and weight them to reflect their probabilities. This can be easy, and it is often possible to assign the score for one result. The potential auctions are usually limited, so there are are only a small number of potential contracts.

Again, the outcome of the a contract may be obvious, especially given the double dummy analysis on the hand records. But sometimes the outcome of a contract played by imperfect players with incomplete information may be far from obvios, and in no way related to the double-dummy analysis.

This is a hand from earlier in the week. We had to an assign a result in 5♣X (by East). It is easy to make 12 tricks by playing for hearts to break with the queen onside. But you may aim for fewer tricks and allow for less favourable lie of the opponents hands.

	9
	Q 5
	A K J 9 5 3
	8 6 4 3
A		Q J 7 6 4 2
J 10 4 3		K 9 8 2
10 8		--
A K Q 10 9 7		J 5 2
	K 10 8 5 3
	A 7 6
	Q 7 6 4 2
	--

After a lead of a spade to the ace, you might play a heart immediately, you might concentrate on taking your diamond ruffs, or you may try something else; and then when you find that clubs are 4-0 you might have to change track. We decided that declarer might not make an overtrick and could go off. Eventually we assigned 5♣=.

This is a hand from today's mixed pairs. During the auction West bid spades twice and East bid clubs and showed spade support. South played in 5♥ on the lead of the ♠K, followed by ♥J to the king. Already, both the defence and declarer might have missed a chance to do better; but this is where we are.

	A
	A J 10 5 2
	10 5
	J 9 3
K Q 10 8 7 5		J 6 2
Q 8 4		7
A J 7		9 8 6 4 2
7		A K 10 5
	9
	K 9 6 3
	K Q 3
	Q 8 6 4 2

Declarer might finesse hearts on the way back or he might play the ♥A and try to take the spade ruffs. It is not clear that taking the finesse and drawing the ♥Q actually gains for declarer. Declare had gone four off after running the ♥J and we assigned 5♥-3.

On both hands however many tricks awarded (within reason) made only a small difference to the match points scored.