Rate this hand and plan your play #5

[inquiry]

[hv=n=saj8542hadq84cq72&s=skhk8752dakj62cak]133|200|Once again you are in 7NT, you get a club opening lead.

 

Plan your play, and rate this hand. Once again,

 

Any similiarities to previous problems (other than being 7NT) is purely a coincidence. Once again, this is an actual hand played on BBO, as are all the hands I show. This one

has an oddity that I found interesting.

Some hidden stuff there, don't read it if you think it will give you an unneeded clue. [/hv]

[xcurt]

I never did Bridge Master so I don't know how to vote, but this looks like a pretty easy chain of logical inference. You have 11 tops and the 5th diamond and no communication in either threat suit, so you must assume the ♠Q is coming down. That gives you 13 so you start looking for bad things that might happen. The only thing you can guard against is diamonds 5-0, so you plan to recover in that instance with a squeeze around diamonds. So you cash your winners in the right order.

[se12sam]

I think this needs "table feel" to get the right answer

 

Start with ♣A, then cash the ♦K.

 

1.  Diamonds are 5-0.

    You need East to hold 5-card diamond AND 5-card heart. Plus you need ♠Q to fall doubleton.

    Follow up by cashing ♣K, ♠K, enter dummy with ♦Q and cash ♣Q, ♥A, ♠A (luck needed), and ♠J. On the last trick, East is squeezed in the red suits.

 

2. Diamonds are not 5-0

    You need EITHER ♠Q to fall doubleton or the same person to hold 5-card hearts + 4 card spade.

    Follow up by cashing ♣K, enter dummy with ♦Q and cash ♣Q before entering hand back with diamonds.

On the run of diamonds, you have a potential criss-cross squeeze if one player has both majors as above. But the problem is: How would I know which major suit will establish? Table feel? Guess? I dont know...

[awm]

You can make if one opponent is 2-2 or shorter in the majors. You run your tricks until you reach the end position:

 

♠AJxx

♥A

 

♠K

♥Kxxx

 

Assuming one opponent started 2-2 majors, the other opponent has to guard both suits. If he has two (or fewer) hearts you can cash the heart ace, come to hand with spade king, and run the hearts. If he has two (or fewer) spades then you cash the spade king, return to dummy with the heart ace, and run the spades.

 

Of course, you also have to try and guard against a bad diamond break, and you want to combine chances with the spade queen coming down doubleton. So the hand becomes quite tricky. I rate this as a bridge master five.