Drop or finesse?

[Hanoi5]

Both red, imp's:

 

♠AK65

♥Kxx

♦Ax

♣AJTx

 

♠QJx

♥AT975

♦KQx

♣xx

 

You play 6♥ on the ♦J lead. On the ♥K, west drops the J, how do you play trumps?

 

Also, what if you played 6NT from the same side, received a club lead and played everything else and got to the same decision in hearts on the twelfth trick:

 

 

[hv=pc=n&s=sqj3hat975dkq3c83&w=s942hjdjt6cq9652&n=sak65hk42da5cajt4&e=st87h863d9742ck7]399|300[/hv]

 

[Cyberyeti]

Am I missing something ? 6♥ seems to be close to laydown if I finesse whether it wins or loses, or indeed if I play for the drop. The finesse is more likely to be right, but there must be a faint chance of a ruff if W has ♥QJ and 7 small diamonds, so I'll probably play for the drop which is truly bombproof assuming E would have lightnered with a void spade (knowing the auction and my opps would help here).

 

In 6N go with the odds and play restricted choice, take the finesse.

[gnasher]

How did the play go in 6NT before trick 12?

[Hanoi5]

How did the play go in 6NT before trick 12?

 

Club lead to the Ten and King and diamond back, taken in dummy, spades, west threw a club and west a diamond, diamonds, club finesse, on the club ace east lets go of a heart, Heart king and another.

[PhilKing]

This is more about divining who has the ♦8, which the carding is likely to have revealed.

[gnasher]

Club lead to the Ten and King and diamond back, taken in dummy, spades, west threw a club and west a diamond, diamonds, club finesse, on the club ace east lets go of a heart, Heart king and another.

It's right to finesse unless you have a very good reason not to. LHO has 5 vacant spaces to RHO's 8. Taking account of restricted choice, that makes the finesse (1 - 5/(13 *2)) = 21/26 ~= 80%.

 

And that's before we've considered East's discard of a heart on ♣A. With ♥Hxx left, he'd have to discard a heart. With ♥xx ♦x, he certainly should discard a heart, but not many players would actually do so smoothly.

[Free]

Restricted choice tells us to finesse, so that's what I'll do. This contract is laydown after any non ♣ lead anyway, so wtp?

 

In 6NT the decision will be way before the 12th trick and I don't understand why I'd risk going down more than I have to. Why would I play all other suits, risking to lose a few ♦ tricks? I'll just finesse the ♣ lead endplaying RHO (and keeping control), cash my ♠s (unless they split 5-1) whenever I can and hope something nice happens in ♥.

 

I wonder what the best play is in ♥ however. Leading towards ♥K will suggest another decision than cashing ♥K. In the first case ♥J will suggest LHO has ♥Q so we should cash, while in the 2nd case restricted choice tells us the ♥J is probably a singleton so we should finesse.

[PhilKing]

In 6NT our main chance is split club honours with a club/heart squeeze.

 

When that does not materialise, but a heart honour drops, we have to guess a two-card ending. Whilst restricted choice tells us the finesse is a big favourite, the fall of the cards should tell us 90%+ who has the last diamond, and since we have a count of the black suits the layout should now be clear. It's not just that East has to remember to keep the idle diamond (and thus throw a heart from three small) - they had to switch and follow with non-readable cards at trick two.

 

Falling back on restricted choice here is pretty lame. From what we know, the heart finesse is working, but that is by the by. To tell with a greater degree of accuracy, we need to know which cards they actually played at trick two. Just to clarifly the point, if a weak East switched to the ♦4 and later followed with the two playing fourth and second, we would play for the heart drop, "knowing" that East was 3352.