World Juniors Tournament

[mr1303]

Well, lots of juniors who went to Piestany, Slovakia are getting together these days to play tournaments online. This is one that I butchered, can you do better:

 

[hv=d=s&v=n&n=sak1098xha5dak9c75&s=sh1087djt82cakqj86]133|200|Scoring: MP[/hv]

 

You end up in 7C with silent opponents, and get the 4 of hearts lead.

 

How do you play?

[Free]

I see only 1 line of play: ♠AK discarding ♥s, draw trumps, and now decide weither to play for good ♠s or for the ♦ finesse. If a ♠ honour has fallen, it's probably better to try and make ♠s, since you still have the ♦ finesse as backup plan. If no ♠ honour has fallen, it might be better to try and ruff a ♠ first instead of drawing trumps.

[Blofeld]

My instinctive line: win, ruff a spade, pull trumps, cross to table with a diamond, ruff a second spade, go back to table and hope that either the spades are now good or the diamond Q drops.

[Finch]

The difficulty is that we have entry problems if trumps are 4-1. What we'd like to do is set up spades with 2 ruffs (if they are 4-3 or LHO has singleton or doubleton honour) and failing that play for diamonds 3-3 with the Q onside. But it looks like we can't quite do it if trumps are 4-1:

 

Ace of hearts (good start!).

Spade ruff.

Draw trumps in 4 rounds.

Diamond to the ace.

AK of spades discarding hearts. If they are 4-3 or LHO has turned up with singleton or doubleton honour, ruff a spade and claim.

 

But if spades haven't come in, we are stuck: what did we discard from dummy on the fourth trump if not a diamond? So if RHO turned up with QJxxx spades and trumps are 4-1 we have to play for Qx in diamonds in either hand (which is about 4% worse than 3-3 by the time RHO has 5 spades and 1 trump). However, all is not lost: if someone has 5 spades together with his (putative) Qxx(x) in diamonds he has already been squeezed as we drew trumps.

 

So this line makes if spades come in, plus (trumps 3-2 and diamonds 3-3 Q onside) or (trumps 4-1 and Qx diamonds) or (squeeze in spades and diamonds).

 

The alternative line is to find out if spades come in before drawing the fourth trump. Entry considerations means this has to be by taking AK of spades at tricks 2 and 3 before ruffing a spade. This line is worse: if RHO has 5 spades you either get over-ruffed, or you go off with trumps 4-1.

 

So I'm sticking with the first line. If trumps are 4-1 and spades not coming in I'll need the DQ doubleton or a squeeze. If they are 3-2 I'm in very good shape.