[xeno123]

This normal-looking hand proved tricky in a recent robot MP tournament:

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(The declarer shown here was a "Q" BBO player).

About half the field allowed EW to play 3♠ making 4. The other half ended up in 4♥ as shown above, with 2 making, one (shown above) down 1 after going wrong at the end, and the remaining 8 down 2.

So the key is what to do at trick 2 after winning the spade lead with the Ace. An immediate spade ruff looks very tempting, and my question is what is the warning signal that should turn one away from that "obvious" play?

[Cyberyeti]

Ruffing a spade is very unlikely to be good, you have 3 obvious losers so you need to either ruff two spades and a club in dummy (defence won't cooperate with this), or make something of the diamonds which will require trump entries to dummy so I don't want to ruff at this point. Whether I play for diamonds 4-1 or 3-2 is a close call.

[rhm]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-August-20, 17:37, said:

Ruffing a spade is very unlikely to be good, you have 3 obvious losers so you need to either ruff two spades and a club in dummy (defence won't cooperate with this), or make something of the diamonds which will require trump entries to dummy so I don't want to ruff at this point.

Agreed in principle. But against good defense you can only threaten to establish diamonds. In essence on the actual layout you must threaten

a) 3 ruffs in dummy
b) establishing diamonds and run them
c) 2 ruffs and 2 diamond tricks.

The defense can counter 2 but not all 3 options.

Quote

Whether I play for diamonds 4-1 or 3-2 is a close call.

This comment is a bit of a mystery since you did not specify a concrete line of play.

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The deal is tricky because

a) diamonds are 4-1 and you need to avoid a diamond ruff by West

but 4♥ is makeable due to some unlikely circumstances

b) The singleton trump is the ♥9 together with the singleton diamond and the club ace in the same hand.

With the actual West hand most Bridge players with blood in their veins would bid 4♠ voluntarily, which makes, after getting a raise and would never defend 4♥.

Presumably a sensible line is to run the ♦8 at trick 2.
West wins perforce and if he understand Bridge defense will play back a spade to force dummy to ruff and remove an entry to the diamonds.
Now comes the tricky part.
Declarer must play a trump from dummy to extract West trump before continuing to threaten to establish diamonds.
East wins and returns a second spade for dummy to ruff.
Now the contract makes by playing ace of diamonds, diamond ruff and a club to dummy.
West will now win and can not remove the last trump from dummy and the third club can be ruffed and there is no overruff by East because West had the singleton heart 9.
An alternative is to ruff the second spade with the heart king, overtake the heart ten and draw the last trump with the heart 8 and then take a second diamond finesse to discard the club loser on the third diamond.

Looks to me all a bit double dummy.

Rainer Herrmann

[gszes]

If this were IMPS I would be worried a ton more about how to make this hand. It looks completely
reasonable that the opps were slated for +140 or +170 in spades. If we can hold this to down 1
vulnerable we might get a pretty good score. It should be reasonably possible to figure out how
to manage the 2 needed spade ruffs in order to insure no worse than down 1.

trick 2 ruff a spade
trick 3 dia ace
trick 4 dia

the main reason for this LOP is that we might still make 4h if trumps are 22 and diamonds 32 but if
those conditions are not available we should still be able to come back to hand via a dia ruff and
ruff another spade before the opps can draw dummy's trumps.

[xeno123]

rhm, on 2014-August-21, 07:06, said:

Presumably a sensible line is to run the ♦8 at trick 2.
West wins perforce and if he understand Bridge defense will play back a spade to force dummy to ruff and remove an entry to the diamonds.
Now comes the tricky part.
Declarer must play a trump from dummy to extract West trump before continuing to threaten to establish diamonds.
East wins and returns a second spade for dummy to ruff.
Now the contract makes by playing ace of diamonds, diamond ruff and a club to dummy.
West will now win and can not remove the last trump from dummy and the third club can be ruffed and there is no overruff by East because West had the singleton heart 9.
An alternative is to ruff the second spade with the heart king, overtake the heart ten and draw the last trump with the heart 8 and then take a second diamond finesse to discard the club loser on the third diamond.

FWIW, both players that made started with a diamond - one ran the 8 and the other played the ace and another diamond.

gszes' point that playing for down one makes a lot of sense too - here it would produce a near-top.

I do appreciate the informed commentary here.