Restricted Reasoning

The principle of restricted choice states that when a defender plays one of two touching honours, the chance of him having the other honour is half that of his partner having it. For example. If you have a nine-card fit with AKTxx opposite xxxx and you cash the ace dropping the queen (or jack) on your left, then you should finesse on the second round.

This concept is confusing to the average person, but not half as confusing as the following restriction would have seemed to Welsh speakers.

The restricted choice element of the English version is clear, but the Welsh equivalent was "lost in translation" as they say, and as Google translate will clarify.

Let us see an application of this principle in a more complex setting, in a hand from last night's EBU SIMs.

At our table, West led the ace of diamonds, and declarer ruffed, drew trumps in two rounds and finessed the spade. Now there was an inescapable spade loser. If declarer cashed the ace of spades first, before drawing trumps and leading a second spade, she should find the winning line. West played the ten of spades on the first round, so that East is two to one on to have the jack of spades. 

Suit play gives the best line as running the nine, but that is in a vacuum, without an opening 1NT for West. 

The right line is therefore to duck the second round, and here that brings home the bacon, an old phrase, which originates from the 11th century.

Geoffrey Chaucer mentions the phrase in The Wife of Bath's Tale and Prologue, circa 1395:

But never for us the flitch of bacon though,

That some may win in Essex at Dunmow.