[helene_t]

♥J lead. Opps play Acol but it is possible that 3♠ is forcing, who knows. Plan the defense.

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Spoiler

I won ♥A, and then I thought we might need some diamond tricks before they go away on the clubs so I played ♦K. Good news: ♦K held. Bad news: now it's game over.

[fuzzyquack]

Imps or mps? It changes a lot. On imps, we need ♣ ruff(s), on mps it's tougher since something like Qxxxx,KQx,xxx,AK is looming. The lead is somehow confusing since your partner should lead the lowest ♥ from apparent length with a ♣ void.

[helene_t]

Sorry, matchpoints

[johnu]

fuzzyquack, on 2024-February-01, 11:31, said:

Imps or mps? It changes a lot. On imps, we need ♣ ruff(s), on mps it's tougher since something like Qxxxx,KQx,xxx,AK is looming. The lead is somehow confusing since your partner should lead the lowest ♥ from apparent length with a ♣ void.

With Qxxxx,KQx,xxx,AK, partner failed to lead a singleton club. As for leading a small heart with a club void when holding a sequence, I don't have that "agreement". Of course, even at IMPs, letting the opponents have 2 overtricks is 2 IMPs.

[johnu]

Spoiler

Using Garozzo's rule, partner doesn't have a small singleton club or that would have been the lead.

If playing ♦K at trick 2 doesn't beat the contract when the contract could be beat, then declarer would have something like

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If declarer has 2+ small diamonds and ♣AK7, then you can still get a ruff and beat the contract with ♦K lead.

Playing a club at trick 2 loses to something like

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I would probably just lead ♦J for minimal deception.

[DavidKok]

Spoiler

There's a slight chance partner has singleton ♣K in addition to ♦A, giving declarer something like ♠Qxxxx, ♥KQxx, ♦xx, ♣Ax. Now a diamond switch may even beat the contract if declarer goes for the club finesse, and might prevent overtricks even if declarer has the ♦A with similar shape and partner can cash the club king. If declarer has ♣A sec they might still go for a ruffing finesse and again we might have to play a diamond up to prevent an overtrick, giving declarer the same hand as before but swapping a small club for a small diamond. I'm not sure that it's clear to go for the club ruff. Unfortunately I don't know which defense is better, at MPs I think I should play a diamond. It might give away the contract, but there's more scenarios where it prevents an extra overtrick (and with this dummy the odds of beating 4♠ are slim anyway).

[helene_t]

johnu, on 2024-February-02, 01:48, said:

Playing a club at trick 2 loses to something like

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I would probably just lead ♦J for minimal deception.

The actual hand was similar to this. ♦J might well have worked. Try to pretend not to have ♦Q.

The problem with my ♦K return was that declarer could now count my points as I was a passed hand. And drop partner's stiff ♣K.

[johnu]

helene_t, on 2024-February-02, 04:48, said:

The actual hand was similar to this. ♦J might well have worked. Try to pretend not to have ♦Q.

The problem with my ♦K return was that declarer could now count my points as I was a passed hand. And drop partner's stiff ♣K.

The way the play went, it's a hard hand to be deceptive after as a passed hand, already playing ♥A and trying to persuade declarer to finesse for ♣K.

♦Q return is an obvious falsecard, since partner would have led from ♦AK, and it wouldn't be from ♦AQ because that risks taking no diamond tricks if declarer has the king. So, ♦Q is marked as a falsecard from ♦KQ.

On a different hand, ♦K return from Kx or KJ could work deceptively if also holding the ♣K to persuade declarer to play for the club drop.