[the hog]

You are playing a VERY strong team. The makeup - and this is vitally important - is a world class Pole and an ok Aussie - (good but not great). Your partners are both very strong players but not Eastern Europeans - and yes this does make a difference!

This is board 10 of 16. Your first 4 boards were a disaster. You misdefended a game, you did not bid a game, they bid a slam on 2 hooks and you got whacked in a part score for 300. Ouch! You have crawled back quite a bit and then:
3C (X) 3S (6H)
You hold:
AQJ9xxx
x
QJxx
x

Dummy tracks
KTxx
Qxxx
AKxx
x

You have picked up a bit, but not enough to win; however you have a few boards to go, and this is the crux of my question!!

Question 1 - how do you defend this if the Pole is at the helm?
Qun 2 - how do you defend this if the strong but not expert Aussie is at the helm? - At the risk of being nasty, substitute your avge American here.

Question 3 - does it make a difference?

Question 4 - how do you defend it if Rado is playing it?

You know you probably have this beat!! So does this all matter? YES, why else would I be asking?


Pd leads the 7H , 8, 9, 5

[Codo]

A question first:

1. Pd leads the 7 of spade?

I would never play the 9, I would always play an honour.
No need to show declarer that I really have them all.

Declarer should have: 1 Spade, 5+ Hearts, 4 Clubs
and 3- diamonds.

With 1534 he is always down if his clubs are not AKQx or AQJT or he has and endplay
with S KT D AK opp
H x Dxxx

Is there a defence against this holding? Yes, a diamond return in the second trick.

So can we handle 1624?

No...

The only other chance besides a diamond trick is a trump trick. If this trick is not allready there, I see no holding, where pds trumps can be promoted.

Okay, so I believe, that the only trick we need to have now is the play of the diamond. Any other trick won´t go away.

To your "declarer" problem: I like and respect Aussies, so I won`t play for a spade return and hope for a too low ruff.
And I am too blind to see any other return, which depends on the abbilities of the declarer...

Kidn Regards

Roland

[the hog]

Look at the state of the match Roland!!

[inquiry]

"You know you probably have this beat!! So does this all matter? YES, why else would I be asking?

I am far from sure you are beating this. Why not 4NT? Surely the strong player is looking at the CLUB - ACE and likely club King, and really good hearts. Could partner have HEART J9x? Yes. With that hand a spade back now is a trump promotion. So we will hold that option in reserve. Could partner have stiff Heart King to go along with stiff SPADE? Possible, but much less likely.

Besides attempt for trump promotion, what else is there? We could pretend to have a CLUB void, and lead the spade 2. Could this lead a good player to pull two rounds of trumps playing us for 2 hearts, and then go for some kind club-diamond squeeze on partner?

It seems to me that if DECLARER is 1-5-3-4 he is toast... anything will do (not a low D lol). One problem hand is if he is 1-6-3-3, where you could be exposed to a trump squeeze. So, I guess I would return a high D. Of course, since we are behind, I am fairly sure partner is not sitting on an 8 card CLUB suit here.

Question 1 - how do you defend this if the Pole is at the helm?

Not sure how to answer, because I don't understand the reference, so I will leave this one alone.

Qun 2 - how do you defend this if the strong but not expert Aussie is at the helm? - At the risk of being nasty, substitute your avge American here.

Average american never heard of trump squeeze, so I return the 2 of S and hope for trump promotion. If I don't get the trump promotion, I still expect it to go down if declearer is 1-5-3-4 or 1-6-3-3

Question 3 - does it make a difference?

Maybe

Question 4 - how do you defend it if Rado is playing it?

Diamond Queen.

ben

[the hog]

It seems to me that if DECLARER is 1-5-3-4 he is toast... anything will do (not a low D lol). One problem hand is if he is 1-6-3-3, where you could be exposed to a trump squeeze. So, I guess I would return a high D. Of course, since we are behind, I am fairly sure partner is not sitting on an 8 card CLUB suit here.

Average american never heard of trump squeeze, so I return the 2 of S and hope for trump promotion. If I don't get the trump promotion, I still expect it to go down if declearer is 1-5-3-4 or 1-6-3-3

Average Australian neither.

Yep a low D is not a good idea!

It seems to me that the only possible loser will be a D, but a trump squeeze will squeeze me in S and Ds. If you return a D hon this breaks up the squeeze; but here is the rub. The Aussie is playing it. The Pole , or Rado, would find the trump squeeze as they are brought up on this stuff through their chess backgrounds - study of end positions etc. If you play back a low S and declarer hopes you only have 6 and misplays AND the Pole notices, how will he feel? If the trump promotion would work, how would you feel? This is the reason for the questions!

Declarer's hand was:

x
AKJxxx
Txx
Axx

Partner did have 8C and the Pole did notice that the t. squeeze would have been on. It would have been pretty much automatically found on the run of the trumps.

[Rado]

Hi all,

I just cannot understand why my name is mentioned, maybe some joke? LOL

Anyway it would be good idea to show the possible squeeze position ( I think the correct name is CRISS-CROSS TRUMP SQUEEZE)

Dummy
Kx
-
A
-

Declarer
-
x
10x
-

RHO must keep both AQ of sp and Qx of Di
Now we must be from Dummy and the defender is already Squeezed at S/D ( note that if we are at declarer's hand at this moment the Defender keeps Aspade+2 Di and no squeeze). That's why returning Q of DI renoves the vital entry and ruins the squeeze.

brgds/Rado

[inquiry]

I just cannot understand why my name is mentioned, maybe some joke? LOL

I think it is because it is so much easier to spell than Mahmood Maybe The_Hog should have said if Zia was playing it (which is easier to spell than Rado). The point was how to defend against a declearer who not only has heard of a trump squeeze, but would be sure to find it.

Anyway it would be good idea to show the possible squeeze position ( I think the correct name is CRISS-CROSS TRUMP SQUEEZE)

Thanks for showing the ending. I was tired last night or I would have expanded my short description to show what I meant by a trump squeeze. I will return the favor by explaining why you are calling this a "criss-cross" trump squeeze. A "criss-cross squeeze" is one in which the the threat suits are divided between the two hands, and the entry to each hand is in the threat suit held in the other hand. A typical four card ending would be...

S-A
H-JT
D-2
S-KQ
H-KQ
D-
S-JT
H-A
D-A

When the DIAMOND Ace is cashed, West has to throw a major honor. If it is a Spade, the dummy wins the SPADE-ACE, and south is re-entered with the heart ACE to win the good spade J. If it is a heart, South takes the heart ACE, then crosses to dummy with the SPADE ACE to enjoy the last heart. Thus, the entries are crossed and the player criss-crosses the hand to cash his winner.

In a legitimate trump squeeze, the trump serves as a super ACE in one of the threat suits. So all such trump squeeze are, in effect, a version of a criss-cross squeeze. So in fact, I think calling these "CRISS-CROSS TRUMP SQUEEZES" is actually redundant, because a proper trump squeeze is by definition a criss-cross squeeze.

Ben

[the hog]

I just cannot understand why my name is mentioned, maybe some joke? LOL

I think it is because it is so much easier to spell than Mahmood Maybe The_Hog should have said if Zia was playing it (which is easier to spell than Rado). The point was how to defend against a declearer who not only has heard of a trump squeeze, but would be sure to find it

True. I also wanted to ask if it was worthwhile giving the declarer who did not know about trump squeezes a chance to go wrong, so that his partner - who would have found the squeeze would get annoyed and hopefully stuff up some boards. He did overbid dreadfully on one hand a couple of boards later. I guess this is some sort of Grosvenor gambit?

[inquiry]

Quote

I just cannot understand why my name is mentioned, maybe some joke? LOL

I think it is because it is so much easier to spell than Mahmood Maybe The_Hog should have said if Zia was playing it (which is easier to spell than Rado). The point was how to defend against a declearer who not only has heard of a trump squeeze, but would be sure to find it

True. I also wanted to ask if it was worthwhile giving the declarer who did not know about trump squeezes a chance to go wrong, so that his partner - who would have found the squeeze would get annoyed and hopefully stuff up some boards. He did overbid dreadfully on one hand a couple of boards later. I guess this is some sort of Grosvenor gambit?

Do you mean you returned a low trump, and declearer, who could now make on trump squeeze ruffed low? And this unsettled his partner so much, he futzed the play on the next few hands... :-)

If given time I can often find the defense on these hands, but my old mind works too slow for most games. But after watching the tanks in the vugraphs the last several days, I think I could work this out in that amount of time at the table. But usually on BBO, if you pause at all to think one or more of your opponents are typing something like the following....

faster PLZZZZ
play, Play, PLAY!!!!, PLAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
.
Test
...
4
3
2
1

Ben

[the hog]

Do you mean you returned a low trump, and declearer, who could now make on trump squeeze ruffed low? And this unsettled his partner so much, he futzed the play on the next few hands... :-)

Yes - low S, but his pd futzed only one.
I find these hard on bbo as well for the same reason. depends who you play against I suppose, but most are impatient.
Pd said I returned a low S because I did not see the squeeze coming - lol ;D