[FrancesHinden]

Playing my inaugural BBO boards, I was looking at the traveller for this hand and discovered that of the 12 or so tables that played in 4H, only two of them made it. At one of them, the defence did something completely ridiculous. The other one was where my partner was playing it. I looked at the play at a few of the other tables, and found that there was a 100% agreement on what to play at trick 2.

Scoring: XIMP

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There are two possible auctions.
i) An uncontested one to 4H via whatever methods you deem appropriate
ii) Something like this:

1♥  x  xx  Pass
Pass  1♠  Pass  Pass
1NT  Pass  4♥  x
Pass  Pass  Pass

West leads the King of clubs, and you win with the ace.
What do you play at trick 2?

[jvage]

Congratulations on your first BBO hands, Frances! Since this is posted in the B/I forum my answer is hidden.

To me there seems to be 2 reasonable alternatives for trick 2:

Spoiler

Ruffing a club. This looks like the natural expert play, aiming for a dummy reversal or trump-promotion and guarding against the expected (in your second bidding scenario) bad trump-break.

Playing a diamond. Since there will still be at least 3 dummy-entries for taking club-ruffs, and playing to use dummys spades as entries for ruffing clubs could promote a trump-trick (if LHO have say xxxxx, 9, AQxx, KQx) this looks like a very plausible play. This will also destroy opponents communications, and if they lead a trump you are likely to pick up East's expected J9xx(x), reducing the risk of an overruff.

Since the general plan is the same in both cases, eventually cashing the spades and aiming for as many trump-tricks as possible, I need some more time to say which is actually best.

If this was a bad field my guess is that the declarers played the heart Q, a play that can hardly gain, and loses on many of the most likely layouts.

John

[jocdelevat]

I will play club to ruff then ace trump follow by q trump.We need to ruff 3 times clubs to promote 10 so transport between hand a dummy could be a problem if we start with trump.

[FrancesHinden]

I guess everyone is too scared to say what they would do!
The important thing before playing the hand is to count your tricks, and check you can actually get at them. Assuming hearts come in for five tricks, you have five hearts, three spades and the ace of clubs. That's nine, so you need to develop a 10th from somewhere. The J1098 of diamonds will be a trick eventually by knocking out the AKQ, but if you think how the play will go you may never make a diamond trick:

Club lead won
Three rounds of trumps
Diamond
Club, which you ruff.
Diamond
Club, which you ruff. You have now run out of trumps.
Diamond

If the defence can organise it so that the player who wins the third round of diamonds has a club to cash, you are off.

So if setting up diamonds doesn't work, we must try and make a 10th trick some other way. There are two possible approaches: ruff diamond losers with dummy's short trumps, or try and ruff three clubs in hand (making 5 trumps in hand, the HQ in dummy, three spades and the ace of clubs). Both of these lines are feasible:

- If you try and ruff diamonds, the defence may play trumps for you instead of making you ruff clubs. You might never ruff a diamond, but you will eventually make the long one. Otherwise, you can try and ruff both diamond losers in dummy and can afford to lose either a trump trick or a spade ruff in addition.

- If you know (say from RHO's count card at trick one) that LHO has 4 clubs, then you can play club ruff, spade to dummy, club ruff, two more spades ending in dummy, club... assuming three rounds of spades hold up this comes to 10 tricks immediately if RHO has 3 clubs and not the nine of hearts, or else you have to ruff the fourth club high and exit in diamonds, hoping not to lose two diamonds and two trumps. This line has some dangers if clubs are 5-2 or if spades are 5-2.

I'm not sure which of these two lines is best. They are both pretty good, and they may depend a little on the auction and/or what you can tell about the club layout at trick one. I would be happy with any partner who either played to ruff clubs in hand, or played on diamonds at once.

As jvage says, the (virtually) unanimous choice at trick two was to try and draw trumps. This just left everyone a trick short, not least when trumps turned out to be 5-0!

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Playing either a diamond or a club at trick two works.

Ace of clubs, club ruff, spade to dummy, club ruff, SK, SQ, club ruffed with the 9 and over-ruffed, diamond exit. Either East wins the second diamond and has to lead a trump round to dummy's Q10, or West wins the second diamond and plays a third one, but you can ruff with the Q in dummy: when West under-ruffs this the layout is obvious.

At the table where trumps were very likely to be 5-0 my partner played a diamond, East won, cashed the other diamond and played a club ruffed by declarer. Declarer cashed two spades then ruffed a diamond with the 10, over-ruffed. A trump came back, but declarer could win in hand, cash the third spade, ruff a diamond high and lead a club off dummy. There is no other more successful defence.

[Mr. Dodgy]

I can't justify WHY, exactly, or what my plan was, but I would have played a ♦. how I proceed from there would likely be equally vague, it just feels like the right thing.

[mikeh]

An excellent hand for the thread: the drawing or postponement of trump plays is one of the more difficult, and more important, aspects of successful declarer play... anyone who has mastered this is an advanced player, as far as I am concerned.