[nielsfoged]

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Lead ♠4 (4th best)
You successfully finess with ♠Q (RHO plays ♠2 showing and even number), and you continue with ♠A discarding ♦2.
What do you play in trick 3, and how do you expect the continuation to be?

[gszes]

rho has a dia honor (hard to imagine choosing a speculative spade lead over a dia with AK)
and probably a little something extra but not much with 4 spades. So I am pretty much playing
lho for the heart A and the club Q.
trick 3 ruff a spade
trick 4 low heart toward the dummy and lets see what lho plays. I will generally play rho for
3 hearts if I have to guess. My intent is to play the top 2 clubs unless something about the
distribution convinces me otherwise.

[nielsfoged]

gszes, on 2015-February-12, 19:18, said:

rho has a dia honor (hard to imagine choosing a speculative spade lead over a dia with AK)
and probably a little something extra but not much with 4 spades. So I am pretty much playing
lho for the heart A and the club Q.
trick 3 ruff a spade
trick 4 low heart toward the dummy and lets see what lho plays. I will generally play rho for
3 hearts if I have to guess. My intent is to play the top 2 clubs unless something about the
distribution convinces me otherwise.

Your analysis of opponents hands is fine, but it seems that your trump holding in hand could become (almost?) too short. I believe there is a better card to be played in trick 3..., but maybe I am not right?
/Niels

[Dinarius]

Diamond honours are almost certainly split.

I ruff a spade to clear them.

Then I play diamond 8 towards dummy.

D.

[suokko]

Planing to ruff one spade and two diamonds and play clubs from top to end play Qxx to open trumps sounds like nice plan to avoid trump control issues. I would expect RHO to hold a balanced hand to only bid 2♠ (if they play 4 card majors I would reevaluate my thinking)

[gnasher]

suokko, on 2015-February-14, 06:02, said:

Planing to ruff one spade and two diamonds and play clubs from top to end play Qxx to open trumps sounds like nice plan to avoid trump control issues.

So you come down to

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with a defender on lead.

They just lead a spade, and you're in a worse position than if you'd just drawn trumps. For example, if you ruff in dummy and play a heart to the queen, you lose to a trump promotion when the hearts are Ax-Jx, which would be fairly embarrassing.

Quote

I would expect RHO to hold a balanced hand to only bid 2♠ (if they play 4 card majors I would reevaluate my thinking)

If RHO has a balanced hand, you're cold simply by ruffing a spade at trump two and playing a heart towards the king.

Presumably the objective is to make when LHO has ♥AJx, without having to guess the club layout.