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.
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