[bill0mates]

1) Heart 2, A, 6, 4
2) Heart 5, T, K, 3
3) Heart Q, 9, Club 2, Club 4
4) Diamond J, 2, 3, A
5) Club A, 6, 5, 3
6) ? Over to you

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[bill0mates]

BTW, how do you insert a line break in the Comments section of a hand insertion?

[blackshoe]

Try control-enter.

[inquiry]

bill0mates, on 2012-April-29, 08:51, said:

BTW, how do you insert a line break in the Comments section of a hand insertion?

enter... i added them to your text

what carding agreement for count are you and your partner using?

[bill0mates]

Thanks for the edit. I did use <enter> first time. I did not try Control+Enter. Will bear that in mind in future
It is a pickup partnership with whom you have no agreements on carding.
Sorry, not helpful, I know. I am intrigued to know if it makes a difference to your action.
BTW I forgot to mention that it is IMPs, if that makes a difference.

[inquiry]

bill0mates, on 2012-April-29, 09:24, said:

Thanks for the edit. I did use <enter> first time. I did not try Control+Enter. Will bear that in mind in future
It is a pickup partnership with whom you have no agreements on carding.
Sorry, not helpful, I know. I am intrigued to know if it makes a difference to your action.
BTW I forgot to mention that it is IMPs, if that makes a difference.

i just used enter... get it to post here without worrying too much about it, when the hand is pasted into the "text window" and the widget is gone, simply add your "enters", no need for control.

As for the hand, it would be nice to know if partner has doubleton club or not. Here is the problem on the hand.... declarer is going to set up diamond tricks. To be able to defeat this, we are going to need partner to have the ♠A, the ♦K, and either only two clubs or the spade queen and only three spades.

We seem to be in luck with regards to partner's spades. Since partner needs the ♠Ace and ♦K we play him for that, and if he had 4♠ and those 7hcp surely he would have made a negative double. This also means west is 3-6-x-y, where x and y are at least one each, and if west had 3♣ partner would have lead his singleton at trick one. So west is either 3-6-2-2 or 3-6-3-1. We know partner has at most most 3♣. So even without signals, I play partner to be 3=3=4=3. If he has ♠ATx, that is not going to be good enough (anymore...the we can ruff a diamond ship sailed on the trump lead). So I am going to need him to be have both the top spade honors....

If your partner would not pass over 1♥ holding ♠AQx ♥xxx ♦Kxxx ♣xxx, then you may need to play partner for ♠Axx ♥xxx ♦Kxxxx ♣xx. I think you can have your cake and eat it too. Lead a low spade here. Partner will win and return a spade. IF DECLARER has the ♠Q, partner will return a club when he wins the ♦K. So in I don't guess the club signal makes all that much difference.

[bill0mates]

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So, of those who voted, they unanimously let it through (sorry). Maybe they envisage a different lie of the cards where a club continuation gains. At the moment I cannot picture it. Inquiry got it spot on, but ironically didn't cast a vote

My thoughts:
West and North are doing a lot of bidding here. West has gone out on a limb to contest the partscore vulnerable, and North has gone out on a limb to double them into game. In cases like this I tend to assume that if one of them has not got their bid, I trust partner to have his. In any case, partner needs to have the cards for his double for this to have a prayer of going down, so we have to assume that he has it, even if we have doubts.

Perhaps, from South's perspective, there remains an outside chance that North still has the ♥J. However, it seems unlikely that he would lead a ♥ at trick 1 from such a holding, and even if he did, (1) declarer may have played low from dummy at trick 1, and (2) I still cannot picture a remaining distribution where a ♣ continuation gains over a ♠ switch.

One occasion in which a ♣ continuation might gain is if North started with a singleton ♣. However, it seems to me vanishingly unlikely that he would lead a ♥ at trick 1 with such a hand, and in any case South could protect against that possibility by switching to ♠ immediately when in with the ♦A before even cashing a first ♣

So, for North to have his Double, it seems that he must have the ♠A and ♦K, and either the ♠Q or doubleton ♣. In either scenario a ♠ switch beats it. But if, as Inquiry notes, declarer has at most 1 ♣, a ♠ switch is critical.

It is a bit unfortunate that dummy has ♠9, but that is how the cards were dealt. With a lower ♠spot, North would only require ♠AT8 as sufficient for a ♠ switch to beat it.

For the pedants, South might have discarded ♣A on the third trump, or led a lower ♣ than the Ace on the first round of that suit, and yes North's opening lead is the only one to give South a problem. But I thought it quite interesting, and it seems to have challenged the voters.

[inquiry]

bill0mates, on 2012-May-03, 13:46, said:

Inquiry got it spot on, but ironically didn't cast a vote

"I love it when a plan comes together". You can consider mine a vote for a spade.

[petterb]

inquiry, on 2012-April-29, 21:00, said:

As for the hand, it would be nice to know if partner has doubleton club or not.

I think partner would've led a club, not a trump, with a doubleton club.

[bill0mates]

Perhaps the double is irrelevant to the correct defence, although it should help to find it. As Eric Jannersten points out in "The Only Chance" (great book), at IMP anyway you need to assume that partner has the cards (if credible) to beat the contract, even without a double.

I think it also interesting that if North had held ♣xx and either♠AT8 or ♠AT9, and East had NOT held ♠9, then a ♠ switch by South is still required to beat the contract before cashing a second ♣, so as to provide North with a ♣ entry to South to repeat a ♠ through declarer's remaining ♠Qx.