shellsnail

At the table I will ruff, cash ace club, play queen club. finesse the spade queen, draw trump and claim 12 tricks. caters for king club singleton offside + any break. caters for Qxx, Qx spade onside. + any trump 3-2 or better. The alternative of trying to finesse clubs only works with 4-2 spades q spade dropping or Kx club doubleton onside. I'm not doing any calculations at the table but intuitively this seems like a worse line. What's the verdict?

What about 4NT?

Take K♠, play the 9 diamonds and run it/duck. Take spade return, cash ace club, then cash ace diamonds. If 2-2, cash diamonds and depending on the pitches, either finesse the club or establish the heart trick when someone gets squeezed to drop spade winners. In 90% of actual hands, the person with short spades will start pitching one first, to avoid pitching a heart spot card or a club. Imagine East holding 87xxx Axx xx Qxx. Running the diamonds would force 3 pitches. He can pitch 2 hearts, but what's he going to do for the 3rd pitch? Spot the anguish in their faces and -evil grin- If at this point west has already pitched a spade, a spade pitch from east basically gives you a safe make via hearts. Most defenders will do this. If it's an excellent defender who pitches a club, then too bad for you but you tried your chances. or West holding QJTxx Ax xx xxxx How is he going to find 3 discards? If he discards 2 clubs, you can basically drop the queen offside. So he probably discard 1 club, 1 heart and 1 spade. Again you get a safe make. If diamonds break badly, take the club finesse and hope for 3-3. Postponing the club finesse in this line is better as it opens up possibilities of some kind of squeeze to occur and overtricks when clubs break 4-2 for instance. There's absolutely no advantage to taking the club finesse early. You will lose 3 spade, 1 club and 1 heart for -1 anyway if it's offside. If it's onside and 3-3, you are always going to make; if it's onside and 4-2 or worse and diamonds are breaking you still make. tl;dr: maintain control of diamond suit by ducking 1 round early. If 3-1, play club 3-3, Q club onside. If 2-2, run diamonds and watch discards. Fall back on club finesse if nothing interesting happens.

You're holding 8 points. On this bidding your partner is unlikely to hold an ace or king. I'm thinking your best chance is to lead KC and hope declarer guesses heart wrongly. If you lead anything else, there's always the chance he might pitch away the club loser after he messes up trumps. On the other hand, if you really think they have a 9 card heart fit, then perhaps avoiding the club lead is best and hope for 2 club tricks to appear. But I'm pretty sure in most of those layouts declarer will have some sort of strip end-play available, so it might not matter that much.

Hmm looking at the bidding more carefully. Seems like club is best.

I think in this particular hand it is key to rule out the spade lead based on North's 2N bid showing doubleton spade. Your lead could eliminate a guess in the suit. On top of that, if you count the tricks and points, declarer is likely to score 4 clubs, at least 4 spades, and 1 dime. If he has both KQ heart (split or not doesn't matter), the contract is guaranteed. So the only chance of defeating it is a heart lead to gain tempo and play partner for either Q or K heart. But I'm guessing you already know all that and it still doesn't feel right. In that case I would say amend your feelings by challenging your intuition actively. Feed it with more data; jolt yourself out of the current reality. Practice some routines before leading such as counting HCP, tricks etc. until you internalise certain concepts. No one is born good at bridge. It's dangerous to rely on intuition in a game based largely on probabilities. Sure psychology matters but those situations don't usually come up that much. Hope this helps. p.s. In matchpoints it would be harder to say what is the right lead, but I would say a spade is still too dangerous.