[msheald]

Just curious. When is it appropriate to make a safety play in matchpoints when no other information is available?

To me, a safety play is when one gives up the chance to make an overtrick in order to assure the contract. This usually occurs when on is concerned about a low frequency card distribution.

The reason I ask, is that it seems to me, over the course of hundreds of hands, a safety play will yield less matchpoints than otherwise since a safety play is designed to deal with worst case scenarios. As a result, overtime, the player who does not use safety plays will score better.

However, this does not apply when one has additional informal from bidding, card play, etc., in order to understand how cards might lie.

I'd appreciate folks opinions. Best regards.

Mike

[AL78]

My take on this is that a safety play to make the contract can be considered if you can judge you are in a superior contract to the rest of the field and making the contract is essential to avoid a bad score, because the likely par contract will almost certainly be universally made. Another situation is that the defence have either gifted you a trick on the opening lead or missed a killer lead, and you want to maximise your chance of making because you think many of the field will go down. An example could be taking a technically inferior chance of overtricks but the contract is safe if that chance doesn't work, whereas taking the best chance of an overtrick means you go down if it fails.

How you manage to judge the situation if, like me, you play in very mixed low turnout club sessions where pairs can miss cold and easily bid games yet bid low HCP games which make because the hands fit very well is another matter.

[Cyberyeti]

AL78 is basically correct.

One that comes to mind is where you've reached a very good but thin 6♣ where you suspect very few are in it

Your trump suit is A10984/Q7652 or similar and there are no losers outside. The first round of the suit goes 2-3-4-pitch

[helene_t]

Basically what AL78 says. But it can be difficult to judge what contract the field is playing, so arguably you shouldn't put too much energy into thinking about it.

I recall one hand where we bid 1NT-3NT, my partner (dummy) not mentioning his 5-card spades because "we needed a swing". I thought everyone would be in the easy 4♠ so I risked my life for the overtrick which I thought was necessary. Turned out that for some reason nobody else had bid game some we would have scored a top even without the overtrick.

So if you are playing in a weak or heterogenous field, you should often pretend that it is IMPs. Even in a completely vanilla auction like 1NT-3NT, there will be some pairs who somehow manage not to bid 3nt, or some opponents who make a kamikaze overcall so your direction ends up defending, or maybe your 3NT is a weird contract because on most tables someone will preempt in front of you.

On the other hand, you should not make safety plays to guard yourself against very unlikely bad splits. In one of Marten's books there is a hand where a 100% line is available, but the point is that even at IMPs, if the other table is in the same contract, a 95% line for an overtrick is better than a 100% line for no overtrick.