[chasetb]

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You are in 7♠, VUL, in the South, on bidding I'm ashamed to put on here. Opening lead is K♦. Can you bring home 2210 points and take 1st place?

EDIT - there was no interference in the auction.

[jmcw]

My plan is to ruff 3♥. I can get to dummy 3 times, once in trumps, once in ♣, and once by ruffing a ♦. No real danger getting over ruffed.

To make I need ♦ to be no worse than 6-2, ♣ no worse than 5-1.

[Cyberyeti]

jmcw, on 2011-August-23, 05:50, said:

My plan is to ruff 3♥. I can get to dummy 3 times, once in trumps, once in ♣, and once by ruffing a ♦. No real danger getting over ruffed.

To make I need ♦ to be no worse than 6-2, ♣ no worse than 5-1.

This is not quite right, as after ruffing 3 hearts, you have to get back to the long trump hand to draw trumps before cashing the second club and the hearts (presumably by ruffing a second diamond) so you need diamonds 5-3.

I think it's probably the right line though, although if the second club stands up, you can cope with pretty much anything, so playing 2 top clubs early is not silly.

[Bbradley62]

I hope to cash ♦A, ♣A, ♥A and ♣K before cross-ruffing 9 tricks. Of course, the first two tricks ruffed in dummy, with the low trumps, would be ♦.

[inquiry]

They have eight pretty good diamonds, so 7-1 diamonds is too unlikely to worry about (unless the bidding started at a very high level).
Couple of lines to consider

1) Ruffing finesse in hearts... well forget that as it is roughly 50%, we can do better.
2) Ruff diamond, ruff heart, spade ACE (assume both follow), ruff heart, club Ace, ruff heart, ruff diamond. Needs diamonds no worse than 5-3 or 6-2 with two with WEST and trumps no worse than 3-1. I guestimate this at about 63% including the squeeze chances: 4=4 hearts nearly 33. another 22 for heart queen with shortness and then the small remainder on squeeze chance of long heart and long clubs together.
3) Cash spade ACE (assume both follow), club Ace, Club King, ruff club high. If clubs are set up, pull trumps, claim. If you need to ruff another club, play trump to south, ruff club high. Clubs good. Pull trumps, claim. Needs clubs 3=3 or 4=2. Odds around 84%. So that is much better than line one.
4) Spade Ace (assume both follow), ruff a heart, diamond ruff, ruff a heart, club Ace, ruff a heart. ruff a diamond, pull trumps. This makes if diamonds are 5=3 or if West has only two diamond. This is up to about 88.5% (assuming both follow to first round of trumps)

IF they show out on the first round of spades, then need to rethink it. But the ruff three hearts seems right.