[david_c]

Scoring: IMP

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 W  N   E   S
 -    -   1NT P
2♥ Dbl 2♠ 4♥
4♠ Dbl AP.

1NT was 12-14, 2♥ was a transfer and 2♠ promised three. The play goes (standard carding):

S: ♥J - ♥9 - ♥2 - ♥A
E: ♥7 - ♥8 - ♠5 - ♥6
W: ♠Q - ♠K -♠A -♠3
E: ♠2 - ♠4 -♠J - ♠T
W: ♦3 - ♦5 - ♦J -

How do you defend?

[rbforster]

You meant South opened 1N? If I'm North defending 4♠X I think I've got 4 trump tricks myself unless I get endplayed...

[Rebound]

I win the ace and return the ♣ 10. I'm not at all sure this is right given that it's uncertain who holds AK of ♣ and K of ♦, but partner must have 2 out of 3 of those cards for auction. I just don't know which 2 for sure. I believe both declarer and partner each have 7 cards in the minors and from my hand it looks likely they're both 3-4 in ♦/♣.

[FrancesHinden]

Let's trust partner.

He has Ax KQ652 in the majors, and played the 6 on the second round of hearts, indicating no strong suit preference between the minors.

Declarer has Axx Ax in the majors.

Partner's first diamond is the 3, so he either has a 3-card suit (making declarer 3-2-3-5) or has Kx (making declarer Axx Ax J10xx (A/K)xx).

Partner must have the DK, with no diamond honours he would have played a much lower heart.

We have no diamond pips at all, so if partner does have Kx declarer is going to have one discard from dummy on the fourth diamond and only four losers, unless we play a club now.

If partner has K103 of diamonds declarer would not have touched the suit.
The problem is that if declarer has, say,
Axx Ax J10x A/Kxxxx we are screwed anyway. Declarer will win the third diamond in dummy and play a club to the king/ace and a club. Whether we unblock or not we will be endplayed on the second round of the suit.

So let's hope that partner has Kx of diamonds. Now we play the 10 of clubs which runs to declarer's king. He can play another diamond, but partner wins and plays a club to our queen and, um, we're stuck again.

So all in all partner should have won the first diamond to play a club through.

[Sambolino]

duck this and next diamond

[Fluffy]

I think Sambolino is right, only a missguess from declarer can help us now.

[david_c]

Rob F, on Jul 14 2008, 11:03 AM, said:

You meant South opened 1N? If I'm North defending 4♠X I think I've got 4 trump tricks myself unless I get endplayed...

No, you're South.

[Codo]

Win and Queen of Diamonds

Do you play attitude signals?
In this case, pd dislike hearts, so declarer does have the AK in that suit plus the Ace of Spade and the Jack of diamond already shown. This is a total of 12 points, so pd does have the King of Diamond and the Ace and king of Clubs. So we take the diamond now and play the queen of clubs.

If you play length signals at trick one, he has 3 hearts and we are less sure about the points, but he should still deny the King of hearts, so I would play the same line.

[FrancesHinden]

Codo, on Jul 15 2008, 09:41 AM, said:

Do you play attitude signals?
In this case, pd dislike hearts, so declarer does have the AK in that suit plus the Ace of Spade and the Jack of diamond already shown. This is a total of 12 points, so pd does have the King of Diamond and the Ace and king of Clubs. So we take the diamond now and play the queen of clubs.

If you play length signals at trick one, he has 3 hearts and we are less sure about the points, but he should still deny the King of hearts, so I would play the same line.

Codo

Did you read the auction?

Partner doubled 2H, so he does not have only three of them. If declarer started with AKx of hearts, then he would have discarded a club on the king of hearts, and partner doubled with Qxxx. You know that partner started with KQxxx in hearts. His 3 on the first round was almost certainly count, which confirms this.

[FrancesHinden]

Fluffy, on Jul 14 2008, 12:54 PM, said:

I think Sambolino is right, only a missguess from declarer can help us now.

Yes I agree with this. In fact ducking the diamond slowly doesn't really matter, it will be obvious to declarer anyway what the layout is.

[Sambolino]

why misguess? it's down to guessing only if declarer has A9x in clubs and in that case he must guess it right. if he has K of dia pard has AK of c, and if he has K of c he's down always

[Codo]

FrancesHinden, on Jul 15 2008, 07:17 PM, said:

Did you read the auction?

Partner doubled 2H, so he does not have only three of them. If declarer started with AKx of hearts, then he would have discarded a club on the king of hearts, and partner doubled with Qxxx. You know that partner started with KQxxx in hearts. His 3 on the first round was almost certainly count, which confirms this.

Convincing.

I did not see any remarks about our bidding and carding, so I thought that the double of 2 Heart was take out of spades. But of course you are right, that this is not common practice.

And I agree about the club discard, if declarer has xxx (or more) clubs, he surely had discard a club asap.
So partner must have the heart values and seemingly a dubious double.

So maybe our best guess now is to never touch clubs and hope that he misdefend
Maybe we should play declarer for Axx,Ax,JTxxx,Kxx? Pd doubled then with Kx,KQxxx,Kx,Axxx? Possible, but...

In this case Sambolinos line is the best.

Ty

[david_c]

Well, here is the full hand:

Scoring: IMP

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It seems the only way to take the contract off legitimately at this point is to win the ♦A and lead the ♣T. Anything else and declarer will make it if she plays correctly. (I tried the ♣Q which made it easy.)

This hand was from a teams-of-8 match. My teammate Michael Byrne was faced with the same situation and found the ♣T play. In fact our team had three good scores on this board (I think they were +300, +140, +50) and we still lost IMPs.

[FrancesHinden]

Sambolino, on Jul 15 2008, 11:30 AM, said:

why misguess? it's down to guessing only if declarer has A9x in clubs and in that case he must guess it right. if he has K of dia pard has AK of c, and if he has K of c he's down always

No, it's just a guess. Assuming partner's card in diamonds is genuine, we're postulating a layout such as this:

QJ9xxx
x
Qxx
Jxx


A8x
Ax
J109x
Kxxx

after heart, heart ruff, spade finesse, spade, diamond ducked, diamond to partner's king, partner plays a club back.

Declarer can rise with the king and play a diamond. We win, cash the queen of clubs, and....

Similarly if declarer has only 3 diamonds we have to concede ruff-discard after the CQ holds.

Now, it's true declarer has a good chance of getting this wrong, because he might play partner to have AQx of clubs (where on earth did the double of 4S come from?)

[Sambolino]

i guess i read the post too fast don't know how i managed to miscount trumps. with no endplay menace ducking is safe but you're right c10 is indeed the best play, and it's nice to see it at the table

[MFA]

[Sambolino]

too late, this is right in case part raised dK on the first round

[david_c]

Yeah, the diamond was led through partner. Sure it would make things easier if he went up with the king (and this would be the only defence if he did not hold the ♣9) but that seems to be an even harder defence to find at the table.