Now when I order up from S2 I always assume dealer (i.e. my partner) must have at least one void. With 5 cards and 4 suits it's always possible in theory. But not always in practice, it seems! I ordered up 10S and dealer, I discovered later, had this hand:
AH
QS
AD, 10D
AC
Now I would probably ditch AC but I can see why my partner sacked the 10.
Not many broader lessons I can think of given how rarely this shape of hand would crop up, but the point for me is that seemingly iron-clad assumptions are not true 100% of the time (even assuming competent play). Anyone got a similar tale?
Why would you discard an ACE as he only has the upcard? End up with 2 ACE dbltns? He now lowers his chance of supporting your order doing that.
Suppose he did lead to the Club (Dealer discarded the AC) And if Eldest leads a club you follow suit, dealer has to use his only trump and now cannot lead trump. He has to lead an ace, and it gets picked off. You just might be in trouble!
FACT IS, AN ACE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BETTER THAN A "VOID." Hopefully he is smart enough (and you to play 2nd hand low) to win the trick and lead trump. Even if you ordered thin. But I bet you had 3 trumps because you have no aces?
Consider this:
You surely shouldn't 1) Discard an ace unless you have 4 or 5 trumps; 2) You should not complain that your partner has 3 off suit aces; 3) Yes it very rare hand that your partner has only the trump you ordered & 3 off suit aces.
Want the statistical chance of No trump (assume you have at least 2 + upcard) is 23.4% no trump X 1.2% (having all three aces) = 0.28% - that is 2.8 times per 1000 deals or 1 in 257 hands. Rare but it does occur.
Hands like this are why I get a little irritated when I see people say that dealer will always have a void on an S1 order. It is always possible for the dealer to create a void but it is not always guaranteed that the dealer will have a void. The dealer will not always have a void on an S2 order. I can think of lots of times that I was 4-suited as the dealer on an S2 order.
I'm not sure how I would have handled that hand either. I probably would have discarded the 10D too. The AC is the second choice for a discard but because I don't have a clubs doubleton, there's an increased chance that I can get the ace to walk.
I'm also curious to see what the simulator says about this one.
AMAZING! Your comment(s) are silly - discard an Ace vs a 9 or 10? The dealer discarded something, and it was probably a 9 or 10. And could have been a Club. When you make statements back it up with some rationale to support it! I gave you just the opposite reasoning.
So here is another, Dealer discards the AC. S2 orders with AS, 9S 10S, and S3 has JC JS. A heart is led S2 trumps the lead that S4 would have won, and now S2 leads trump. S3 wins it with a bowers, leads back the other and now has KC.
There are other combinations that defeats your rationale as well. How about supporting your position?
Euchre is a statistical game, both with trumps and discards. And it seems like "always" is a pretty good statement if covers 98%+ of all hands.
My program discards the 10D, but that's because I coded it that way - it makes sense to me. So I tested other discards just to be sure.
Specifically, I tried discarding the 10D, the AC and the AH, and looked separately at cases where each seat declared trump. I fixed the cards in dealer's hand and the turn card, and trialed over 100,000 otherwise random hands.
Below are the EV's if dealer discards the 10D / AC / AH:
S1 declares: -0.86 / -0.93 / -1.21 [5,462 games counted]
S2 declares: +1.40 / +1.33 / +1.34 [25,065 games counted]
S3 declares: -0.89 / -0.94 / -1.04 [4,812 games counted]
S4 declares: +0.18 / -0.23 / -0.30 [64,830 hands counted]
It looks best to discard the 10C in every case, but while the differences are statistically significant they are smaller than what I would have predicted. Except for when S4 declares (which is what usually happens) - having those 3 aces is exactly WHY S4 needs to call here.
So it seems our intuition and reasoning is validated.