[phil_20686]

These are all at IMPS.

After bidding 1H-2H-4H the defence lead a trump to the ace and another trump. The defenders are strong players.

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What now?

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Finally, how should you defend this contract:

You lead the Heart Q. This fetches the 3 from partner and the 6 from declarer. Your carding here will be reverse attitude. What now?

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PS: For interest, my vote represents what I did at the table, not what I necessarily think is right in retrospect. Feel free to criticise any/all of my actions.

[Fluffy]

ruffing finese, just because LHO might cover with ♣Kx

4NT if partner wants to try for slam and we have all cards working we have to give it a try.


You should had specified carding, but I gt for another heart in case partner holds ♥AK3 and 6 diamonds.

oops I missvoted, if ♥J holds I don't know what to do next, only a club seems to be worth something (KQJxxx xx QJ QJx)

[gszes]

1 lead club J to club Q (unless it is covered) and (assuming it holds) play the ace and ruff a club
playing this way has two advantages if finesse works and clubs break 43 I get 2 pitches
from the club suit (and need not worry about spades being 33) if clubs dont break I fall back on 33 spades
the other advantage is someone looking at K9xx might mistakenly think it is a good idea to cover the club J with the K (especially if they are looking at the heart T and dummy with no obvious entry)

playing for the ruffing finesse can gain 1 trick at most and we are dependent on a 33 spade break

[JLOGIC]

RHO obviously has the club king because he continued trumps. With no club honor nobody would return a trump, they'd shift to something, because it looks like we have very good trumps and clubs.

I mean yeah it's possible that he worked out that his side couldn't have 4 cashers (our best hand would be like KJx KQJxx QJx Kx), and that we must have a stiff club in order for this to go down, and blah blah but that is really deep and unnatural, and I think the biggest clue for sure is just that people don't return trumps with xxxx clubs or w/e.

[JLOGIC]

If you know your LHO you might have a good grasp on whether he would lead a trump rather than a club with nothing in clubs, in america most people seem to lead a club but I think either is fine and I wouldn't read that much into it. It's certainly less of a clue if you don't know your opps tendencies than the clue that RHO would be unlikely to play back a trump looking at the CK.

The other consideration is that I have much more play if LHO has the CK and RHO (since I can make 100 % on Kxx of clubs on my left, I will ignore Kx since they will cover). But again, I feel really strongly that RHO has the CK so hopefully I get 3-3 spades or something else that is good.

[fred]

Mostly for amusement value, but I have seen this sort of move work before:

If the 10 of hearts has appeared take the ruffing finesse and, if RHO doesn't cover with the King, discard a spade(!) from hand.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[JLOGIC]

lol fred, you would feel dumb if RHO had K fifth of clubs though!

[JLOGIC]

Re the defensive problem:

If declarer has, say, AKQxx xxx Qxx Qx, we must shift to a club right now. Also if declarer has something like AKQxxx xx Jxx Qx we have to shift now to get partner off the endplay.

If declarer has something like AKQxxxx xxx x Qxx, cashing out our hearts does not work since declarer can pitch 2 clubs. The main time I can see that cashing out hearts is necessary is when declarer is 5314, or when partner has the spade ace and declarer is more like KQJxxx xxx x KQx. Though in the latter case, I think partner can and would overtake the hearts and continue them so we should rule that out.

Partner cannot really help us most of the time by overtaking and playing a heart, since he doesn't know how many hearts we have. With AKx that would be really dangerous since it sets up the ten sometimes when we have QJxx. Maybe he should do it with AKxx? But we might have Qx on this auction pretty easily lol.

All in all I'd play a club.

[phil_20686]

I thought these were pretty interesting, then you guys come right away and solve them all and it makes me feel really dumb .

On the first one Spades were 3-3 with the club king on your right.

On the second one partner had AKJTxxx Ax Axxx - so you can always make 12 tricks on careful play, though you have to be a bit careful since the 2N bidder is 2-6-5-0 and its possible partner might get the ace of clubs ruffed or something. Thought this was tricky tbh, partner has shown a very good single suiter, and I have two trumps and A a K and a shortage, otoh, a trump lead is expected so the shortage might not be that useful, and bad breaks will surely make it impossible to set up the club suit. I passed and felt pretty clear at the table, but maybe I dont have a lot of experience with how strong partner should be for this auction.

On the third one declarer had AKQJxx xx Jxx xx so if you don't find an immediate club switch you expose partner to a partial elimination since he has KQJT of clubs. . Felt like the third one was pretty hard, opponents would have been playing 2S = any min which is normal in UK 2/1 players I think so 2S did not promise 6 and could ahve been 5(332) or even 5-4 with 4 diamonds if a minimum. An immediate club will make you look like a total numpty if declarer had KQJxx xxx Qxx Kx or similar. I didnt really appreciate on how many layouts a club was necessary though, so on balance I think its probably right to play a club.