[sakuragi]

bd 5

confession:
clearly D is useless. just managed to let go my s instead of d to let go jec.
i don't know why. probably the diff between pro and amateur?

[Phil]

Defense is easier when you count tricks. This is true especially against slams.

5H, 5C and a spade ruff. The spade cannot vanish.

Your partner made the killing lead. Compliment it by maintaining your focus and staying in the hand.

[nige1]

After bouncing opponents to the 5-level, you should probably call it a day.

Defence is hard but East should keep his ♠s. Some relevant defensive rules of thumb:

- You can usually rely on partner to protect a suit, in which he has shown strength.
- if you can see that declarer could easily have ruffed any losers in a suit, then it's less important to keep cards in it.
- Defending a suit contract, in side-suits where you hold potential winners, you should try to keep length parity with declarer and dummy.

---

[gszes]

several things:

1. You are a passed hand at favorable so don't expect your partners "weak" bids to stay within too well defined parameters (once game appeared to be non existent I chose 4d in the hope it would be more disruptive to opps than us).
2. Assuming you think p has around 8 dia just how much defence do you think our partnership has against the opps. A better strategy might have been an immediate 6d (hard to bid 7d looking at the spade AQ behind the xer) or maybe even pass is better since the opps do not have much room to explore anymore. Your 5d gives them another chance they do not deserve and the 6d gives them yet another chance (an this time they got it right). Preempt to max or silence are the best ways to go and silence can be powerful when an opp has a void (quite likely given the bidding).
3. Something can be said for a 3s bid (as a lead director) but having 5 of them (rather than say 3) diminishes the effectiveness for that purpose.