[cathy6]

North South EAST West

♠ A Q 2 ------- 6 5 4 3 K J 10 9 8 7
♥ A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 -------- 5 4 3 2
♦ Q J 10 9 8 7 A K 6 5 4 3 2 --------
♣ -------- A 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 K Q J



The above hand was featured in newspaper several years ago and lately shown to me, it was played in 7 ♥ by South, lead from west K ♣ , I have puzzled over this for several days and cannot find the game , any help out there

Cathy

[cathy6]

NORTH ♠ A Q 2 ♥ A K Q J ♦ Q J 10 9 8 7 ♣ __________


SOUTH ♠_____ ♥10 9 8 7 6 ♦ A K ♣ A 10 9 8 7 6


EAST ♠ 6543 ♥_________ ♦ 6 5 4 3 2 ♣ 5 4 3 2


WEST ♠K J 10 9 8 7 ♥5432 ♦___________ ♣ K Q J



Above hand featured in newspaper several years ago and was given to me recently, played in 7 ♥ with lead from West K♣, have tried to find a solution and cannot, any help

Regards, Cathy

[bgm]

Do you mean this?

---

[bgm]

As confirmed by the other post, this is a typical problem about dummy reversal + unblocking. One ♦ honor can be discarded by ♠A, and the other one need be discard when drawing trump, which means that the trump holding in N need to be longer than S by 1 card, i.e. you need to ruff ♠ twice to achieve that. Due to 4-0 break you cannot ruff the opening lead, and you cannot discard the ♠ as mentioned above, therefore you need to discard ♦ on ♣ A and proceed.

[cathy6]

bgm, on 2014-August-09, 05:39, said:

Do you mean this?

---

Yes TY I couldnt lay it out like that, cathy

[cathy6]

bgm, on 2014-August-09, 06:00, said:

As confirmed by the other post, this is a typical problem about dummy reversal + unblocking. One ♦ honor can be discarded by ♠A, and the other one need be discard when drawing trump, which means that the trump holding in N need to be longer than S by 1 card, i.e. you need to ruff ♠ twice to achieve that. Due to 4-0 break you cannot ruff the opening lead, and you cannot discard the ♠ as mentioned above, therefore you need to discard ♦ on ♣ A and proceed.

I still cannot solve it I discard one of diamond on A spades having won A clubs discarding one diamond on table ,do I rough club to get back to table to play A spades and then rough !s how do I get rid of the 2nd diamond in my hand, this is giving me sleepless nights

[diana_eva]

---

[whereagles]

Didn't play it out, but seems it's like this: club ace (disc diamond), trump up, spade ruff, trump up, spade ruff, trump up, spade ace (disc diamond A), trump (disc diamond K), diamonds.

[cathy6]

bgm, on 2014-August-09, 06:00, said:

As confirmed by the other post, this is a typical problem about dummy reversal + unblocking. One ♦ honor can be discarded by ♠A, and the other one need be discard when drawing trump, which means that the trump holding in N need to be longer than S by 1 card, i.e. you need to ruff ♠ twice to achieve that. Due to 4-0 break you cannot ruff the opening lead, and you cannot discard the ♠ as mentioned above, therefore you need to discard ♦ on ♣ A and proceed.

YES DID IT REDUCED THE HOLDING OF HEARTS IN MY HAND, BUT HAD NOT THOUGHT OF DOING THAT, AND WAS ROUGHING BACK AND FORWARD WHICH DID NOT SOLVE ANYTHING ,SO EASY WHEN YOU ACTUALLY WORK IT OUT , Thanks for the help


Cathy

[PhantomSac]

You need to pitch the AK of diamonds from the south hand, one discard will come on the ace of spades so the other needs to come on a trump. That means you need to shorten your hand which requires you to ruff 2 spades in your hand. Therefore you have to pitch a diamond at trick one (keeping the spades), play a heart to the ace, ruff a spade, heart to the king, ruff a spade, play your last heart and pull trumps pitching the ace of diamonds from your hand, then cash the ace of spades pitching the king of diamonds from your hand, and your diamonds in dummy are good.

Generally the best way to solve these problems is to work backwards, figure out what you need to do (pitch the AK of diamonds), then figure out how to make that possible.

[cathy6]

PhantomSac, on 2014-August-09, 12:47, said:

You need to pitch the AK of diamonds from the south hand, one discard will come on the ace of spades so the other needs to come on a trump. That means you need to shorten your hand which requires you to ruff 2 spades in your hand. Therefore you have to pitch a diamond at trick one (keeping the spades), play a heart to the ace, ruff a spade, heart to the king, ruff a spade, play your last heart and pull trumps pitching the ace of diamonds from your hand, then cash the ace of spades pitching the king of diamonds from your hand, and your diamonds in dummy are good.

Generally the best way to solve these problems is to work backwards, figure out what you need to do (pitch the AK of diamonds), then figure out how to make that possible.

Many Thanks, its amazing how you can get bogged down with all sorts moves and then when you think it out logically how easy it seems

[Zelandakh]

That PhantomSac must be a rubbish player - all he does is copy bgm.

[PhantomSac]

Zelandakh, on 2014-August-11, 05:24, said:

That PhantomSac must be a rubbish player - all he does is copy bgm.

When I posted it I was the first reply in the thread, I have no idea what happened but yes I do look kind of silly now lol.

[diana_eva]

Uhm I messed up, didn't notice the thread was a duplicate. I added the diagram to the wrong thread, which bumped it into recent content, jlall prob saw it there and replied while there was another discussion going on in parallel. Then I asked Barry to clean up the mess and merge the threads . Sorry about that, still learning.

[Zelandakh]

Haha - funny. To the OP, you are new so probably do not get the in-joke here - PhantomSac is a genuinely world class player and it is always a good idea to take notice of his posts in a thread, esepcially if your own opinion is different.