Hand Fred played

[Deanrover]

[hv=d=s&v=e&n=sj9hak84daj9862cq&s=sak5h765dcakt6543]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

 

Long auction, opponents silent, you wind up in 6 ♣, West leading ♥Q. What is your play?

 

 

There was an article about this in last Saturday's Daily Telegraph. Click here to view it. All rights belong to Daily Telegraph plc. yada yada.

[Gerben42]

To the article perhaps, but not to the hand which is public domain.

 

In a trump contract, count your losers. Here you have two, one of which you will discard on the ♦A. Next hand? Not so fast! Gee this was too easy, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

 

See hidden text for solution.

If someone has Jxxx in trumps that's bad news. If it's LHO nothing you can do, so what can you do if it's east? If you can shorten your trumps to the same length as your opponent (i.e. ruff 3 times) you can perform what is known as a trump coup. In effect, both of you have only trumps left and RHO must ruff before you do, in effect giving you a finesse where there is none.

 

So win, ♦A, ruff♦, ♣Q, ruff ♦, ♣A, find out about the distribution, cash your side winners and ruff another red card. Exit the ♠ and claim the last two tricks.

 

 

Now I do not promise I would have done that at the table, depends probably on my energy balance...

[keylime]

My first thought is, if LHO has 4 trumps the hand is likely dead, so I need to assume one of two things:

 

A. Trumps are 3-2. If life was this great, win the first heart, play A of diamonds discarding a heart, then 3 rounds of spades, ruffing. Then K of hearts, diamond ruff, play trumps from top.

 

Since this is a hand Fred played tho......

 

I bet trumps are 4-1 with RHO having the long trumps. So, AH, AD discarding a heart, QC, diamond ruff, assuming diamonds aren't just whacky, play high trump finding out the bad news. Then, KH, and three rounds of spades. We should get some sort of trump coup.

 

Someone PLEASE give me coffee, this is too hard this early in the day.