a game I butchered

[Fluffy]

[hv=pc=n&s=skq94hkj752dj4c72&n=s6haq4dq987caqj93&d=e&v=0&b=14&a=pp1sd2s(4-7%203%20cards)4hppp]266|200[/hv]

lead is ♥3, plan the play

[Alik1974]

Toughie..I would try ♥J, ♣to the Q, run ♦7 and play on dummy-reversal lines.

[gszes]

i would also try dummy reversal but win the Q at trick 1 and then run the dia 7

this does not fatally weaken my hand in any way and still allows me to back in for

the club K onside 33 and trumps no worse than 41. Plus Lho will probably win the

trick and be on lead again.

[mikeh]

I will win the heart A in dummy to lead a spade to the K.

 

Assuming that loses, I expect another heart. I play low.

 

If heart are 3-2 or 2-3, I win in hand to hook the club. I cash the club A and see what happens.

 

If the K appears, I ruff a club high and cross in trump to run the club suit, eventually driving out the spade A.

 

If the K fails, I ruff a club low and (assuming the K appears now) I proceed as above.

 

This works on all 32/23 trump breaks so long as West has 2-3 clubs. This is probable since he has 7 or 8 major suit cards and rates not to have a stiff diamond: 5=3=1=4 is unlikely. 5=2=2=4 is more likely but still against the odds.

 

If RHO shows out on the trump, then LHO is 5=4 majors, and I think we are just plain down at this stage.

 

If LHO fails to play a second trump, well...it depends what he does play. The best return might be a spade, but that will be difficult for him to find even if he has AJ10xx, and very difficult indeed with AJxxx or A10xxx.

 

If he plays a club, we win the hook (and gain a very useful tempo), and can fall back on a diamond hook against the 10. We may survive the 1=4 trump break on this line. If he plays on diamonds, he is setting up another trick for us. So he'll almost always play a trump if he has one. And he almost always has one: who leads a stiff trump on this auction?

 

I thought of the dummy reversal, but imagine LHO winning the diamond 10. He leads a trump. We can play a diamond, and rho wins to play another trump. We are in hand: we take a club finesse and now what? We are down on 5=2=4=2 because we can't set up the diamond, and we only score 3 clubs, 5 hearts and a spade.

 

Note that if LHO holds Kx in clubs, he can cause us a lot of anxiety by playing the K on the first round of the suit. However, I suspect we can't make the hand when this was an honest card, at least not after my spade play at trick one!

 

Note also that we have a reasonably solid inference that RHO holds a top diamond and therefore no club K. LHO would probably have led a diamond honour from AK any number of times. Of course, we'd be assuming the club K onside anyway, since we're down off the top if it is offside, but it's nice to have almost no worry about it.

[Fluffy]

In retrospect I didn't butcher this one, there is no line that makes, I failed to analyce it properly.

 

LHO had underled ♥10983, but winning ♥7 is not enough to make, he will lock you down in dummy with clubs sooner or later. He had 5422 without ♦10 nor ♣10.

 

I think mike is right that spade first is very practical, it might make you look sill when opps just play it back and its the only way to go down, but in practice this will never happen.

[gnasher]

Comparing the two lines:

(1) Diamond finesse against East (I wouldn't call this a dummy-reversal, by the way - we're just trying to set up one diamond winner)

(2) Club finesse followed by trying to ruff down the king.

 

It seems to me that (1) loses when LHO has four diamonds including ♦10, and (2) loses when LHO has four clubs. Do you agree? (If not, the next bit's irrelevant.)

 

Given that we know where the honours are, we're comparing a 3=2 break of the small diamonds with a 3=2 break of the small clubs, except that line (1) also works against xxx=10x. Hence I think that (1) is better.