[Flameous]

This is really interesting hand. With Rodwell being up so much, I'm going to quote other famous author, Krzysztof Martens, who has written: "In theory, planning in defense should aim at minimizing the values or specific cards necessary for partner to hold in order to set the contract."
Here it is more like optimization:

You can beat if partner holds 8xx KJxxx Jxx xx by switching to a heart.
On the other hand if partner holds xxx KQxxx Jxx Qx you must play clubs.

I doubt very many get to the point of seeing both these successful defenses and actually making comparisons, but now we should make the best choice of defense based on partner's 2♥ bid.

We hold the ♥T so partner can't hold KJTxx, so it's more likely he holds KQ?xx. (I'd assume 3/5 or 2/3 for fit bids generally)
Then it comes much to partnership style but I think partner often holds another card in addition to those hearts. He is forcing to 3 lvl opposite short hearts anyways. If it's ♠H, we are beating anyways, so we should tend to place partner with ♣Q. After all this thought process which might have holes and is foggy at best, we might agree that playing clubs is best after all since it only requires partner to hold cards we already tend to place him with.

No way could I pull that off at the table

[gnasher]

We might be able to work it out from LHO's actions (although the sight of dummy suggests that we may not be able to rely on the conclusions).

KQJ7xx xx xx Qxx might be happy enough in 2NT, but KQJ8xx xx xx xxx would be more inclined to bid 3♠.

On the other hand, KQJ8xx xx xx xxx looks like a WJS. Could he have bid 2♠ over 1♦ to show that sort of hand?

[phil_20686]

Flameous, on 2012-February-07, 04:40, said:

This is really interesting hand. With Rodwell being up so much, I'm going to quote other famous author, Krzysztof Martens, who has written: "In theory, planning in defense should aim at minimizing the values or specific cards necessary for partner to hold in order to set the contract."
Here it is more like optimization:

You can beat if partner holds 8xx KJxxx Jxx xx by switching to a heart.
On the other hand if partner holds xxx KQxxx Jxx Qx you must play clubs.

I doubt very many get to the point of seeing both these successful defenses and actually making comparisons, but now we should make the best choice of defense based on partner's 2♥ bid.

We hold the ♥T so partner can't hold KJTxx, so it's more likely he holds KQ?xx. (I'd assume 3/5 or 2/3 for fit bids generally)
Then it comes much to partnership style but I think partner often holds another card in addition to those hearts. He is forcing to 3 lvl opposite short hearts anyways. If it's ♠H, we are beating anyways, so we should tend to place partner with ♣Q. After all this thought process which might have holes and is foggy at best, we might agree that playing clubs is best after all since it only requires partner to hold cards we already tend to place him with.

No way could I pull that off at the table

I think, more to the point, if partner has only the KJ of hearts, and the diamond J, he needs a black suit card.

I find the auction confusing, what was norths double? Might south not have shown Qxx support over 2N? or did he think that partner had spade tolerance? With Qxx club and a spade suit with poor texture he could have bid 3c, so perhaps we should infer from the three spade bid that south will have good texture, and is therefore likely to have the 87 since we have the T9. He is also perhaps less likely to have Hxx in clubs. This might encourage the club switch. However, it just feels wrong. Perhaps my intuition is wrong here.

[inquiry]

On this hand, I was playing with a new tool (let's call it a hammer instead of days of thunder), so everything looked like a nail to me. The defense worked, but it felt like while it worked it might not have been the "best defense" in theory. This is why I ended the original post with "or was this really the right play." Still I found this a very interesting hand.

[kgr]

Flameous, on 2012-February-07, 04:40, said:

....we might agree that playing clubs is best after all since it only requires partner to hold cards we already tend to place him with.

No way could I pull that off at the table

It also requires partner to duck the ♣Q