Wes (aka the legend) wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 8:11 pm
Analyze/evaluate Seat 1's play in the video. Then, if different, tell me how you would play Seat 1's hand first round/2nd round/and what would you lead in whatever scenario you choose.
All you guys nailed it. I don't know what's better between calling diamonds or bagging with the intention of calling next (in this spot I prefer the latter), but that's not what's really important. What matters most as far as Seat 1 play goes is understanding that "Pass, pass" is not an option with this holding.
Although if you change our holding from this:
To this:
Then "Pass, pass" is the play.
But when you don't have reverse next blocked with this hand you gotta "pick a lane bro" and there's 2 viable lanes to choose from: Call diamonds or wait for Next.
After the hero passes in the 2nd round and the 2 seat calls spades, not only does the hero lead the turned down suit which in itself is bad enough, he apparently has already forgotten that the
was turned down making his
boss. If you're gonna choose a poor lead, for the love of god at least choose the boss card, not the
. This hand is an example of very poor Seat 1 play.
As I said before, I prefer passing in the first round and calling Next. If I did, I agree with others that we gotta lead the Right, followed by the boss Kh, then the question is what should we lead after that? Irishwolf says we should lead the
for trick three. Is he right?
Well the only argument against that would be this: The 9h is not a boss lead, the Th is still out in the wild. Our partner threw off the
on our 2nd trick offsuit boss lead. Perhaps it's instead best to lead a spade hoping to catch our partner's void? Generally speaking, when you don't have a boss lead on trick three, leading the suit your partner threw off on your off Ace (or effective ace) will be the best lead, but this hand is different. Everything about this hand is SCREAMING for you to lead that
.
Why is Irishwolf right? Look what happened so far in the hand. After the 2nd trick the dealer has already shown himself to be void in trump and void in hearts. And on the 2nd lead Seat 2 played the
, suggesting he is also out of hearts. So the 9h has a great chance of being boss, and in the worst case scenario when Seat 2 does have the Th, our partner can safely trump in without worrying about being overtrumped by the dealer. Leading the 9h also potentially puts seat 2 in a nice squeeze where he can burn a trump and get overtrumped. And even if our partner can't overtrump, leading the 9h still forced out another trump from our enemy which is a good outcome for our hand. So the action in this hand clearly dictates our best lead for trick 3 is the 9h. If Seat 2 is void in hearts and doesn't trump in, Seat 3 can play off for an easy trick.
Note: Results oriented arguments are pretty much by definition poor arguments. Nevertheless I'll still point out if the hero calls Next and his teams plays the hand well, they will get 2 points. In the actual hand the hero passed and his team lost 1 point. So calling Next here nets 3 points for the good guys. A 3 point swing in a 'race to 10' game is HUGE. And that's the value of calling Next with marginals in the 2nd rd--simultaneously playing strong defense and tying to hit your partner's range. Yes, your euchre frequency goes up significantly, but all the 2 pt, 3 pt, 4 pt, 5pt, and 6pt swings you create in your team's favor makes up for a lot of euchres in the long run.
