Halo

Because the spade finesse doesn't necessarily help, I would draw trumps and play AK spades. Depending on what the club lead looked like I may be able to judge the correct play if East does turn up with Qxx of spades and has to exit from king of clubs. Otherwise, I will end up finessing hearts - although then I suppose a last tiny possibility is that if I can place King of clubs with West, and there is no 'show-up', I amaze my friends by dropping a singleton king of hearts in East.

Maybe we can the hand now and see how diffferent lines work. I always think people who post a play problem should post the hand.

Bidding looks alright to me. Mmm.. so may plays. Think I might eliminate diamonds and play Ace and another club.

1NT A small minority, OK! I think when I pass in this situation, good things rarely happen. Usually you have to make them happen.

3C Assuming 2NT is the more shapely raise - otherwise vice versa.

Keycard (For me) [Edit] Opener has shown a strong hand, not necessarily 4 cards in clubs. I would assume 4D instead of 3S was still good, but this time real clubs, less in diamonds.

Interesting to see the problem results. Personally I was closer to to treating it as 1♠, than upgrading to 10-13 intermediate 2♠, but I didn't really like either.

Multi to show a weak 2. I have had occasional partners criticise bids like this, but I think too rigid a view of preempts limits their frequency and effect.

Compelling argument from Sotired. Why not 4C.. one small clue for Hercule Poirot. Why 5NT, one huge clue for Hercule -GSF.

Guess the only question after the 4th suit is whether 4C is RKCB as well. But so what, 5NT is obviously GSF.

Pass

Not Paris (he was a guy) it's the Empress Josephine. 7C of course.

Pass. It's what I chose and I may be its only representative! I like to get extreme weakness across early, freeing me up for the later auction (I fondly hope).

Assuming you always cover her line succeeds in 20 positions in the heart suit 1/2 the time and 11 positions the other 1/2 the time. Finessing succeeds in 15 heart positions. Since the ones where finessing works are more likely that is the right play, but it's not that antipercentage to play her way. If you believe the Jack clubs is a singleton (or probably is), finessing must be right. If you make no assumptions, I think King of Diamonds is (at least?) as good.

Skaeran is prodding us in a particular direction. Obviously East expects to make this, since he didn't have to bid it. If he has a real freak like xxxxxx,,AKxxxxx, do we make it more likely they bid a making seven when we bid on - probably not. So we're left with maybe -500 worst case in 7♥ versus a making vulnerable slam... Mmm seven Hearts it is then.

OK - limitless optimism?

Obviously not nonsense, but as you say, you do have to play a card, and your vote was for running Jack of Hearts. It may be a personality weakness, given the strength of arguments, but I would not run the Jack of Hearts. I would play King of Diamonds.

4H Not a shiver, not a hesitation. Willing to discuss if it should have been 5H or some other distraction.

1D If I bid conservatively at this point I'm well placed in most auction continuations.

3H fit jump. This seems the most descriptive first bid, and I hope that later in the auction partner will realise I'm not doing blackwood of some sort because I've got the spade cards.

Just telling partner my Heart holding to make his choices easier when he gets on lead. At the extreme I don't want any accidents if partner is: xxx (Q)xxx xx AKxx and tells me I must be asking for a spade switch since I can't have both top honours in hearts. I am giving information to opponents, but I'm not sure they can do very much with it in practice.

Rightly or wrongly I'm confident about taking this off and I'm going for at least +500. so I will play King of hearts and another two rounds of diamonds.

43 is 62.18 and 52 is 30.52, but the second 43 is slightly influenced by the first, and 2 in East is influenced by the fact he has three diamonds while West has one (I assume that way round or there would be no problem). I like to to do these things in my head, and I am not up to the precise compensating calculations so I rounded for an approximate answer.

My view is that... After two rounds we know about the diamond Jack (lets say it is still out there). Playing for 43 in either major is about 85% of the remaining space. Third heart overruffed is about 15% of the same remaining space. The lines seem on these assumptions, more or less identical (unless I've made a mistake of course!).

I find this kind of hand very hard to defend at Pairs, weighing the 'dream' of taking the first ten tricks against handing declarer an overtrick. I'm not so sure people put up the King of hearts from three to risk -400.