[FrancesHinden]

Playing in a Swiss Teams event, your opponents bid this hand to the making contract of 3NT. Your team-mates, in an irregular partnership, bid the hand rather less successfully to 7H. Declarer thought for quite a long time and eventually worked out an (unlikely) layout on which he could make the contract, played for it, and went off. He missed a still-against-the-odds but more probable layout, which also happens to make the contract.

I don't know the auction, and I doubt my teammates would thank me for publishing it, so all you really need to know is that diamonds were the only suit not bid naturally. LHO leads the King of diamonds. RHO shows an odd number.

Scoring: IMP

7♥ by West.
♦K lead.

---

[temp3600]

I would play an opponent for queen third in clubs and doubleton trumps.

If this position exists, the two remaining small diamonds in dummy can be discarded on the club K and J (second and fourth rounds of clubs), and declarer's three diamond losers now disappear via a ruff and the AK of spades.

[Trumpace]

My first thoughts on seeing this hand was "cross ruff!". We have 5 top tricks in the non-trump suits and exactly 8 trumps. Making it 13. But, there is a problem with that... We cannot ruff more than three times in each hand! We need to ruff at least 4 times in one hand for the crossruff to succeeed...

A better approach, seems to establish a club for a diamond discard so that we can ruff a diamond in dummy. We can succeed if an opp has Qx clubs or Qxx of clubs and xx of trumps.

Win ♦A, club to A, trump to hand, ♣K discarding diamond, if ♣Q hasn't dropped, ruff a club in dummy, trump to hand, ♣J, discarding diamond and pray that it does not get ruffed. Diamond ruff, AK spades and spade ruff to draw last trump. Enjoy last club.

I can't seem to find any better line.

[hrothgar]

At first glance, plotting a cross ruff looks reasonable

You have 5 top tricks outside Hearts.
If you can score 8 Heart tricks on an xruff, you're home free. So lets see whats necessary to allow you to score our Heart tricks... "All" we need to do is score some small trump. once we're reduced to top trump tricks, we don't care what the opps do.

You need both players to hold 3 Spades, with North holding 2+ Club and South holding at least 4. (Note that the 7 of Hearts is potentially a BIG card here)

Luckily, if Spades are splitting "reasonably, this increases the odds that Clubs will behave as well... I'm guessing that this line is (roughly) 35-40%

[Fluffy]

I need both black Qs droping third, also need 2 trumps for the one with 3♠.

♦A,♣A, ♠ ruff, ♣ruff, 2 trumps ending in dummy, ♠AKJ discarding ♦s (someone discards after dropping his ♠Q). ♥ to hand and claim after ♣Q falls on ♣K.


an alternative is to play for ♠Q doubleton, wich doesn't require the right player to have 2♥, but I thin that is worse.

[Free]

Agree with Fluffy, you need both black suits...

[Winstonm]

Seems the best chance is to find black suits Q-third X 2 with some good fortune in the trump suit.

I win the diamond, (good start, no?), and cross in clubs. Ruff a low spade. Ruff a low club. Now draw two trumps with the J and K. Now I play off the top spades pitching diamonds.

What I need I believe is this hand:

Qxx
xx
KQxxx
Qxx

xxxxx
xxx
x
10xxx

edited: I see that Fluffy played the same way. Great minds and all, right?

Winston

[Trumpace]

What did you have in mind, Frances?

[hatchett]

I don't need Qxx ♠ just Qxx♣ with a doubleton trump.
Win ♦A,♣A, trump to hand,♣K pitching ♦, ♣ruffed, AK♠pitching ♦s
trump to hand, ♣J pitching last ♦, ruff ♦, ♠ ruff to hand. draw trump cash last ♣
Phew!

[FrancesHinden]

Here are my thoughts.
1. The suggested cross-ruff doesn't work. While you would like to make 8 trumps and 5 side-suit winners, you don't have 4 things to ruff in one of the hands without ruffing a black king.

2. So you need to make 7 trumps and 6 side suit tricks, or 6 trumps and 7 side-suit tricks, or 5 trumps and 8 side-suit tricks.

(i) 5 trumps and 8 side-suit tricks needs 4 clubs and three spades. 4 club tricks needs Qxx clubs in one hand. But your entry position is such that you can't ruff one spade in hand and one club in dummy and draw trumps in three rounds. DA, CA, heart to hand, C ruff, draw trumps, AKJ of spades, D/S ruff, KJx of clubs.

This line needs Qx spade, Qxx clubs and trumps 3-2.

(ii) Now you need to ruff two things in one hand and set up an extra black jack and a long card in a black suit. If you ruff two clubs in dummy you've just ruffed the long black suit card, so you will have to ruff a club and a diamond. That means discarding a diamond on a master club, which means someone needs Qxx clubs and a doubleton heart. This is the line suggested 3 times so far, I think: DA, CA, heart to hand, CK, C ruff, AK of spades, heart to hand, CJ discarding a diamond, D ruff, S ruff, draw the last trump, cash long club.

You'd like to check for Qx or Qxx spade as well, in case there is Qx in clubs (3 clubs, 3 spades, 1 diamond, 6 trumps), but your entries don't work. If you start DA, CA, SAK ruff.. you end up an entry short to hand. So the best you can do here is to cash the SAK early in case someone has Qx xx KQ10xxxx Qx (implausible) or indeed a singleton black queen. If the SQ falls doubleton on your right, you can try cashing the Jack after one round of trumps in case something good happens.

(iii) You no longer need the long club, but you need to be able to cash a master black jack having drawn only one round of trumps. The general plan is DA, CA, SAK ruff (unless SQ drops in one or two), CK, C ruff (unless CQ has dropped), one top trump from the relevant hand, winning black jack discarding a diamond, cross-ruff. This line needs trumps 4-1 with the short trumps having any short black queen.

Line (i) looks very poor to me. Line (ii) needs doubleton trump with Qxx clubs. It also picks up Qx club with singleton trump (but falls prey to a second round false card of the Q from from Qxx and doubleton trump). Line (iii) needs trumps 4-1 with any short black queen.

Declarer at the table took line (iii) and went off. He didn't think of (ii) at the time, but we think it's better. More to the point, it makes. North has

Q10xxx
xx
KQ10
Qxx

[EricK]

I put this deal into Jack 3.01.

Left to its own devices it bids the EW cards to 6♥.

In 7♥ on the lead of ♦K it takes Frances' line (ii) and makes the contract.

Not bad at all, I'd say!

[FrancesHinden]

Pretty good.
But I but Jack wouldn't have bought my dinner & driven me home afterwards...

[EricK]

FrancesHinden, on Jan 6 2006, 09:18 AM, said:

Pretty good.
But I but Jack wouldn't have bought my dinner & driven me home afterwards...

We'll wait and see what version 4 includes.

On the plus side, it never complains about my mistakes (either to me or anybody else).