First things first

[dburn]

[hv=d=s&v=b&n=sakj53h4dkj4ck752&s=s10haq1053da2caq984]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

You, South, and your partner - The Great Malinowski - have arrived in seven clubs after the following antediluvian auction:

 

1♥-1♠-2♣-2♦-3♣-4♣-4♦-4NT-5♠-7♣.

 

Five spades showed three aces, and seven clubs was in the pious hope that I could avoid losing a trick to the queen of clubs, preferably by having it myself. Whether or not I could avoid losing some other trick is not the kind of thing that tends to concern TGM all that much.

 

West leads ♣3 on which East plays the ten. How should you play [a] to trick one and subsequently?

[gnasher]

♠A, spade ruff, ♥A, heart ruff, spade ruff.

 

If the spades are good, cash the other trump. If trumps are 2-2 or ♥K has come down, I'm home; otherwise take the diamond finesse.

 

If West has ♠Qxxxx, take a diamond finesse and try to crossruff.

 

An alternative is to cash both top spades before following the same line. This caters for ♠Q coming down in three rounds, and improves my chances if West has ♠Qxxxx, but I would have a problem if West followed to the fourth spade.

Edited September 25, 2008 by gnasher

[andrei]

win A♣

cash A♥ and ruff a ♥

cash AK♠ and ruff a ♠

ruff a ♥

cash K♣

small to A♦

cash the last 2 ♣

 

- if they overruff me at any point I am down

- if Q♠ or K♥ are coming down it is cold

- else, in the endgame, I might have a double squeze if W has Q♠ and E has K♥ or I have to play for ♦ finesse

[mikeh]

I haven't tried to work out all the percentages.. not sure if I am capable of it without a calculator and am sure I couldn't do it in any realistic time line.

 

Win the first club in hand, play A and a heart, ruffing. Return via a diamond and lead another heart. This is where winning trick one may come into play.. if LHO has a doubleton heart, we don't want him successfully ruffing the 3rd round with his notional J.

 

Assuming nothing good has happened so far (and that rho didn't overruff a heart), cash the club K.

 

We are still in dummy at this point: cash the top spades, throwing a heart, and ruff a spade.

 

Then run the clubs, reducing, after the penultimate club, to a 3 card ending, with dummy holding J void KJ void and you void Q x x.

 

On your last trump, lho may already be screwed: imagine him with Q K Q void when you make this play. More often, if he has the diamond queen and either major, he has to stiff the diamond Queen.

 

You throw the spade from dummy, and now, if the diamond Queen is offside, you need rho to hold the heart K... if he holds the spade Q instead, he throws it away.

 

So then you lead the diamond and hope that you have counted out the hand...and it will almost certainly be a guess if the Q has not appeared...

 

 

This line is equivalent to Andrei's, which I read as I was proofreading this

[dburn]

The question of how you play to trick one is not actually a technical matter but a psychological one. Of course you will win the trick in the South hand to preserve high trumps in both hands, but with which card?

 

Because you are not playing RKCB at your partner's behest, he does not know whether you actually have ♣Q, and may be concerned lest you have an unavoidable trump loser. If you wish to reassure the poor fellow, you should win the opening lead with the queen, not the ace. If on the other hand you wish to punish him for making you play these methods, you should win with the ace, not the queen, to prolong his suffering.

[gnasher]

I think it's best to leave him wondering who has the queen of trumps, so as to divert his attention from the actual problem. Now if I choose an inferior line he may not notice it.

[dburn]

He won't notice it anyway. But very few players are cold-blooded enough to lead a low trump from Jx against a grand slam, especially one bid in this fashion. That being so, you should (in my view) play as gnasher suggests: ♠AK and a spade ruff, rather than starting with heart ruffs that might lead to a later overruff.

 

As usual, it did not matter what you did. Trumps were 2-2, East had three hearts to the king, West had the queen of diamonds, spades were 4-3. One of the sad things about bridge is that most of the thinking you do is a complete waste of time. I guess the main difference between the best and the rest is that the best do it anyway, on deal after deal after deal, just in case it isn't a waste of time.

[whereagles]

Since I've been re-reading Kelsey's "Adventures in card play", the only thing I think of is some sort of entry-shifting progressive throw-in squeeze.

 

Oops, this is 7♣. forget the throw-in part then :)