Hands from last Sunday

[John McLeod]

I tried swapping the Ace of diamonds with the Queen and the Grand is still invincible, though some of the lines of play are now quite complicated. As I wrote before, it's possible to find distributions where the Grand can be narrowly defeated, but in the real world the defenders are more likely to go wrong than the declarer, so I still think it will make most of the time.

[Mike Tobias]

Here are a few queries from last Sunday's tournament. I am still in the course of writing this up, and I suspect that one of the scoresheets
is wrong.

(1) How far do you bid with the following hands?

(a) Hinterhand
J: C
C: Q
S: AK87
H: TK8
D: K

(b) Hinterhand
J: CS
C: A9
S: 98
H: A8
D: A9

(c) Mittelhand
J: S
C: AT8
S: 9
H: 7
D: AT98

(2) Suppose you win the bidding with hand (b) at either 18 or 27 and pick up the skat which has H7 and DQ. What do you play?

Patrick

a: pass, 18 or 20 depending on mood.
b: certainly 33, but Grand is very tempting. It's the sort of hand you pass at 33, miss out on a Grand and give someone a free null ouvert
c: 18. 24 if feeling adventurous or stupid

Can't really answer the secondary question as I've seen the discussion.