Study 7Z75 by Richard Pavlicek

How Percentages Change

This study is from declarer’s perspective. To simplify matters, I will assume there are no inferences from the bidding. In real life this is rarely true because even a lack of enemy bidding conveys some information, such as ruling out wild distributions. Nonetheless, I want to focus on how percentages change with card play, so bidding deductions will be ignored.

For example, suppose you have a straight finesse for a king. Before any cards are played, this is obviously a 50-percent chance; but as play continues it may become greater or smaller depending on what you learn about the enemy distribution. If you subsequently learn that East has four cards in the suit and West has only one, the finesse then becomes 80 percent (4-to-1 odds in your favor) if taken through East.

Kinds of Information

Extracted information typically occurs when an opponent shows out of a suit, thus revealing an exact layout. The information about the suit led (not the suit discarded) then becomes a proven fact and can be used in full to determine subsequent odds and percentages. Defenders may try to deceive you, but they cannot hide the inability to follow suit.

Volunteered information is that which an opponent chooses to tell you, such as the cards played in following suit, and the choice of leads and discards. This information is tainted. Any meaning you might attach to it could be the deliberate plot of a defender trying to fool you. An experienced declarer learns to be skeptical of anything that comes too easily. It’s like listening to a sales pitch — you may get some facts now and then, but there’s a lot of bull in between.

Volunteered information in the form of the opening lead, while still suspect to some extent, is more reliable than a lead chosen after dummy is in view, or a discard. In general, declarer does well to take the opening lead at face value. At least it may help you from becoming paranoid if you believe something.

Play this Slam

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

West leads the  10, East plays the king, and you win the ace. You have nine top tricks, and it will be easy to ruff two diamonds for 11. Therefore, all you need is a second heart trick, and you consider the play of that card combination. Alas, there are six reasonable ways to play hearts:

A. Win the ace then let the 10 ride

B. Win the ace then lead to the queen

C. Run the 10; if it loses to the jack, run the queen

D. Lead to the queen; if it loses, finesse the 10

E. Finesse the 10; if it loses to the jack, run the queen

F. Run the queen; if it loses, finesse the 10

Quite a decision! In order to find the best play, let’s see how the missing hearts can be distributed. The following table shows the 16 possible cases and the percentage chance of each. Immediately below is a comparison of Options A-F.

The total percent of each option is found by adding the percentages of each case in which the option succeeds. Option E (finesse the 10, then run the queen) is evidently best. Note that its edge over the near-equivalent Option F occurs in Case 16 when West is void — hence, you will know to change horses, whereas leading the queen allows no recovery.

It should be apparent why Options A and B are equal. Basically, it’s just a guess whether to play East for the king or jack, so the winning and losing cases balance out. Similarly, for Options C and D. In practice, however, it is usually better to choose A over B, and C over D, since there is some chance that if East has the king he will hop with it. Admittedly, the chance of such misdefense is close to zero against an expert, but it grows considerably against weaker defenders.

An Inside Look

Even if you extract no information about clubs or diamonds, you will certainly know the exact trump division; and even if they break 2-1, one defender will have more space for hearts. In that event the changes will be slight, so Option E still rates to be best.*

*Actually, if East has the shorter spades, Options C, D and E become exactly even in theory. Given the equal choice, the edge would go to Option C because of the slight extra chance that East might misdefend and hop with the king.

Now consider a more extreme scenario, which is what actually occurred in the problem deal. While drawing trumps and ruffing diamonds, East shows out on the third diamond, pitching a club. It also happens that West shows out on the second trump, pitching a diamond. You now have extracted information in two suits. West is known to have begun with one spade and seven diamonds, and East with two spades and two diamonds. Hence, you know eight of West’s cards, leaving five unknown spaces; and four of East’s cards, leaving nine unknown spaces.

What about East’s club discard on the third diamond? Doesn’t this account for a known card in East? No! This information was volunteered and has no bearing on the 5:9 proportion of unknown cards between West and East. Essentially, the only information given by the club discard is that East is not void in clubs, but you knew that anyway. He would never pitch a heart in view of dummy, so the club pitch means nothing.

Given the 5:9 ratio of unknown cards, let’s recalculate the percentages:

Wow! A complete turnaround from worst to first. Options A and B now tie for best. This is obvious if you think about it: East is likely to have longer hearts; so finessing through East is more likely to work. As suggested before, the edge would go to Option A because of the slim extra chance that East may hop with the king in Case 11.

Looking Deeper

Suppose both opponents follow suit when you ruff two clubs. The obvious deduction is that, with three more cards of each player known, the unknown space ratio becomes 2:6 instead of 5:9. Indeed, West cannot have more than two hearts, so half of the original heart distributions are now impossible. Based on the 2:6 space ratio, the percentages are calculated again below. (I kept the same case numbering as before.)

Comparing this with the 5:9 table shows the options are in the same order, but the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Option A is now close to 90 percent. Does this seem a little suspicious to you? If so, read on.

A Compromise

Are the percentages from the 5:9 table still true then? No! They could hardly be right since half of the cases are now impossible. The true percentages can be found only by eliminating the impossible holdings (from the 5:9 table) and increasing the percentage of each remaining holding proportionally to obtain a 100-percent total. Since I seem to be chart-crazy, let’s look at one more set of tables with these calculations made.

As seen above, the total percent chance of each option now falls about midway between those from the 5:9 table and those from the 2:6 table. Even if you don’t believe the ideas expressed here, you might agree that this compromise feels right.

The point to stress is that, in the absence of extracted information, percentages determined at a previous trick remain true as long as all the previous possibilities exist. Once a specific case becomes impossible, it is knocked off the chart, and the percentages of the remaining cases increase proportionally.

A Trivial Analogy

	A Q
	3 2

Also assume that you previously learned that each opponent began with four hearts, and only hearts remain. Obviously, your chance of the finesse winning is 50 percent. Now suppose you lead the  2 and West plays a low heart. Does this affect your chances?

One might conjecture that, after West plays a low heart, he has only one unknown card left; while East has two unknown cards. Therefore, the missing king is more likely to be with East by 2-to-1 odds. Surely, this is nonsense because West’s play was volunteered. The low heart was his choice, not yours. Since West would always play his low heart from  K-x, the information is meaningless, and your chances are still 50 percent. In other words, percentages do not change when the only new information is an opponent following suit.