[Trumpace]

East is dealer and opens 2C, showing 10-12 hcp and 5 or more clubs.

You are South and hold AQ4, AQ4,AQ4,K743. You double planning to rebid NT showing 19-21 points.

LHO passes, partner bids 2D, RHO passes, you bid 2NT and partner bids 3NT and the auction ends.

You might not like the auction, but that is how it is. Besides, this is a play problem.

LHO leads the club 6 and you see:

Scoring: Rubber

Lead ♣6.

---

RHO plays the club 9 and you win the K.

Plan the rest of the play.

(As usual, Adv/+ please don't spoil it too early).

[vuroth]

Not expert, but I'll hide, even though I'm usually wrong.

Spoiler

Q♦, overtake. Finesse ♥. If it fails, I'm not getting a ♣ back, so I'll cash my ♦s (I now need them to be 3-2 instead of 4-1), then finesse ♠.

LHO can't have 2 kings so one of the finesses is guaranteed to work.

[NickRW]

Spoiler

This is a not 100% end play.

Initial thought, of course, is to cash diamonds and then take a hook in a major suit hoping to pick the right major suit from the opps discards. Maybe a little better than a 50/50 bet, assuming we can learn anything useful from those discards. If this loses we're down, as LHO will take his king and 4 club tricks. Oops.

Next thought is to cash all the diamond winners (in order to eliminate them from LHO). Then lead a club. LHO must win and can do no better than cash 4 club tricks. Then he has to lead, what? A heart or a spade. Cursory inspection might suggest that it doesn't matter which King LHO has got, he/she has to lead away or finesse partner. But there is a problem with this - 10 rounds of minor suit cards will have been played and we have to come down to the spade and heart AQ combos - but we can only keep 3 of these cards in the ending. Oops, our plan has squeezed our own hand.

So, as far as I can see, best is to cash 2 rounds of diamonds (the AQ), then lead a club. Hopefully this will have eliminated diamonds from LHO (it probably has as he had 4 more clubs than RHO). In which case we've achieved the end play position without squeezing our own hand and have retained a small diamond to enter dummy with. Of course, there is no guarantee that LHO is out of diamonds and he can exit safely - but we're in no worse position than if we'd taken the initial plan.

Hopefully I have not missed anything and explained in appropriate manner for B/Is that read this answer.

Nick

Erm, might have to rethink this - East has the clubs - not West - well it was a good problem with West having the clubs!

[Trumpace]

NickRW, on May 21 2009, 05:53 PM, said:

....well it was a good problem with West having the clubs!

Yes

[Trumpace]

vuroth, on May 21 2009, 05:06 PM, said:

Not expert, but I'll hide, even though I'm usually wrong.

Spoiler

Q♦, overtake. Finesse ♥. If it fails, I'm not getting a ♣ back, so I'll cash my ♦s (I now need them to be 3-2 instead of 4-1), then finesse ♠.

LHO can't have 2 kings so one of the finesses is guaranteed to work.

You can

Spoiler

still cater to 4-1 with LHO

. No?

[Quantumcat]

the finesses go to west so we dont care about clubs. only 1 needs to work cause we have 8 tricks. overtake qd with k, then when taking the other finesse, play the ace, if anyone is short it is east with the long clubs, you can finesse west's ten if he shows out. if you play low to the k or j or play the AQ in one go you have made everything very awkward.

[vuroth]

Trumpace, on May 21 2009, 06:08 PM, said:

vuroth, on May 21 2009, 05:06 PM, said:

Not expert, but I'll hide, even though I'm usually wrong.

Spoiler

Q♦, overtake.  Finesse ♥.  If it fails, I'm not getting a ♣ back, so I'll cash my ♦s (I now need them to be 3-2 instead of 4-1), then finesse ♠.

LHO can't have 2 kings so one of the finesses is guaranteed to work.

You can

Spoiler

still cater to 4-1 with LHO

. No?

True.

[EricK]

Spoiler

If we start with ♦A and then lead ♦Q, we can see whether we can afford to overtake with the ♦K. If LHO shows out on the ♦Q, we can still run 5 ♦ tricks and then guess which major suit finesse to take.

[kgr]

EricK, on May 22 2009, 09:27 AM, said:

Spoiler

If we start with ♦A and then lead ♦Q, we can see whether we can afford to overtake with the ♦K. If LHO shows out on the ♦Q, we can still run 5 ♦ tricks and then guess which major suit finesse to take.

Spoiler

Yes, Similar if RHO is void in ♦

[Quantumcat]

LHO can't show out on the QD? That would give him 11 major cards and he would have made some bids surely. But starting with the ace is good in case they are 5-0.

[lane]

I mixed up my response to this one too -- let me rethink.

This post has been edited by lane: 2009-May-24, 15:36