[FrancesHinden]

In spite of having said elsewhere that I think play and defence is more interesting that bidding, nearly every hand we screwed up in Verona was round part-score judgement in the auction. However, here's one where I got the auction right and the play wrong:

Scoring: MP

1NT P 2♣ P
2♦ P 2♥ P
2♠ 3♣ P P
x all pass

---

1NT is 15-17, 2C followed by 2H showed a weak hand with 4-4 or better in the majors.

LHO leads the D8 to RHO's ace, who returns the Jack, you discard a heart and LHO plays the D5. Plan the play. I leave you to decide how many tricks to aim for, but I don't recommend going two off.

[Miron]

LHO 6-4
RHO 15-17, ♦AJ

I would play ♠x towards king. This will be probably taken with the ace (if not I can locate other honors).
Variant 1: Diamond will return and I ruff with 4 (finesse for the jack). If this holds, ♠Q and spade ruff, club towards 10 (finesse for the jack). If this holds and LHO has no more clubs ♥K and repeat finesse in clubs. Just made or one down.
Variant 2: If RHO will return heart, I'll play for club finesse and club 3-1 or 2-2.

[ArcLight]

With a 5 card major West could have transfered East.
West is 4=4=4=1 or 4=4=3=2.
With 4=4=5=0 he would pass the 2♦ response

Since East denied a 4 card major, lets assume 3-3 or 3-2, leaving 7 or 8 cards in the minors.
For the Double I assume East probably has 3-4 Clubs.

We have 19, so they have 21 HCP

>I leave you to decide how many tricks to aim for, but I don't recommend going two off.

With Spades they will lose at least 2 heart 2 spades and a diamond. If we don't open hearts for them, they will lose 3 hearts and probably go down.
IF they are going down, we need to make our contract.

That means losing 2 clubs, a spade and a diamond.

We need to lose just 1 Spade. Mustr do it before Clubs are gone.

Lead the Spade K, planning to ruff the 3rd Spade.
Once the Spade is ruffed, we are in dummy with 2 trumps.

Lead the 4♣ and play low, finessing Easts honors, and covering whats played.

Then play a heart back to hand and lead another club, covering East card.

[whereagles]

Lead a spade to hand and a spade back. After knowing who has the spade ace, you have a better chance to guess clubs.

[inquiry]

East has 3♠ so West has 5♠. Hearts could be 4-3 or 5-2. It would be nice to know if they follow the "rule" to correct to 2♠ anytime 3-3 in the majors. Anyway, you can discover the heart distribution easily enough with three rounds of hearts ruffing in your hand, and then a few spades. But there is a risk of a trump promotion for stiff ♣JACK should you allow EAST to get on the lead by playing an early spade before a trump.

Since this is matchpoint, examine their contract. If WEST is 5521, they can make 3S likely, as their diamond loser goes on the second club winner, and they lose 2H, 2S is all. If WEST is 5422 you will win 2S, 2H and 1D is all (the diamond provide discards for heart losers). So down one not vul should be an ok score. So, don't get too cute, cash two hearts ending in dummy, then low spade from dummy towards the queen. East can not rise with the ACE effectively, and if WEST wins, his return can not hurt you. This assures 8 tricks (I believe) and still gives you play for 9 (spade entry via king or ruff for play on clubs).

An immediate club is no good, as they maybe able to play three rounds of clubs if if you misguess before you can manage your spade ruff, leaving you with 3 club losers and 2 spade losers to go along with your diamond.

[foo]

♠K6♥K73♦Q7642♣864

♠QT9♥AT5♦K♣QT9752

N--E--S--W--
no-1N-pa-2C;
pa-2D-pa-2H;
pa-2S-3C-pa;
pa-X-all pass

1NT is 15-17, 2C followed by 2H showed a weak hand with 4-4 or better in the majors.

LHO leads the D8 to RHO's ace, who returns the Jack, you discard a heart and LHO plays the D5. Plan the play. I leave you to decide how many tricks to aim for, but I don't recommend going two off.

E almost certainly has something like HHx or AKJ for their penalty X of 3C given that Responder has shown a weak shapely Major suit oriented hand that could be utterly broke.
The 2D response to Stayman also supports RHO having 7+ minor suit cards.

The play on T1 and T2 is instructive as it indicates RHO has D length and was expecting that LHO might be able to ruff a D. That means C's are probably 1:3 and D's are likely 85:AJT93
Working hypothesis: LHO:RHO is =5521:=3253

34-36 of the HCP are accounted for, leaving LHO with 4-6 HCP and 8+, probably 10, cards in the Majors.
Given that RHO seems to have only 3 C's. it is more likely that RHO has 17 HCP than 15. Implying that it is more likely that LHO has 4 HCP rather than 6.
All this also implies that LHO is more likely to hold the SA than the CA or CK...

We have 1S+2H+1D+4C= 8 tricks. That means to make 3C we need to ruff a S in the short hand before the short hand is out of trumps. OTOH, EW very likely can make 3S (Our likely tricks being SK+SQ+HA+HK) so if We are -50 rather than -140 it might be good enough.
So...

Play the SK from dummy on T3.
If RHO unlikely rises with the SA, you are probably playing for -1 (you still have a chance if C's are 2:2 or something else good happens.)
If LHO likely wins the SA, you've likely killed the communication between the defending hands and you definitely have endplayed LHO on T4.

[HeartA]

I don't see how one could manage to get 2 off. even if RHO won with SA and returned D, and you ruffed with the wrong card (lost 3 trumps), all your losers were still 3(trumps)+SA + DA: if trumps were 2-2, you would be able to ruff one S; if trumps were 3-1, you could still ruff one S since RHO wouldn't have entry to draw trumps.

[Free]

LHO seems to be on a 5-5-2-1, that gives RHO a 3-2-5-3. The most important question is probably where the ♣J is. I agree with Ben's analyse that you should play for a safe -1 or better, and indeed, a Morton's fork in ♠ is probably the best start.

[winkle]

Do they play mud? I'm going to assume not.

I think lefty is 5521 and righty 3253. I think it's very good odds that righty
has AAAK, because 1. he opened 1N 2. he doubled 3. if he doesn't have
AK of trumps he may well have lead a trump back at trick 2, to guarantee that he
can take away the spade ruff. The DJ makes 16 HCP. This means lefty has the
HQ.

I don't have enough trump control to guarantee a spade ruff, so I'll likely have
to guess the location of the SJ. Assuming righty has 15-17 HCP and using vacant
spaces:

10/29 of the time righty will have no other jacks.
4/29 of the time righty will have the SJ.
5/29 of the time righty will have the HJ.
10/29 of the time righty will have the CJ.

So about 86% of the time lefty will have the SJ. There are some extra clues
that righty does not have room for the SJ: lefty didn't lead a heart, which
suggests that he doesn't have have HQJ; righty's double with three trumps
suggests he has AKJ of clubs. So 86% could even be a little conservative.

So if I want to make this contract, I'd lead a low club now, and play the queen
if righty follows low. I need to lead a low club now so that I have enough
entries to pick up AKJ in righty. In due time I'll float the ST for the
contract.

This line has the downside that it will go down 2 if I misguess both clubs and
spades. And since they can make 8 or 9 tricks in spades, down one can still be
a decent score. An alternative is Ben's line which assures no more than down 1,
but it also assures no chance of making. I feel pretty good about the
inferences this analysis is based on so I'd go with this line.

[FrancesHinden]

I'll give the answer now that no-one has made it.
(Well, winkle is the only one not off yet, but the comments suggest he is going to be.)

I went with more or less the consensus line and played a spade a trick 3. RHO won and played a diamond (if you played a club a trick 2 RHO will rise and play a diamond) and I ruffed with an intermediate pip, over-ruffed with the Jack, and was one off.

The winning line is to play a club at trick two, then ruff the third diamond with the Queen of clubs and play another trump. As trumps are 2-2 you can eventually ruff a spade in dummy and make 9 tricks.

LHO has xxxxx QJxx xx Jx and RHO AJx xxx AJ10xx AK.
Is there any reason to play for this layout?
Here are a few thoughts after the event:
- would LHO really lead a low doubleton diamond with a singleton trump?
- RHO doesn't need AKJ of trumps to double, it's matchpoints and he's probably looking at 4 quick tricks
- RHO doesn't know the spade position, with AKJ of trumps wouldn't he be more likely to stop your spade ruff now, rather than give you a free entry to the dummy?

Although 2S looks to have been making, we had a poor board for -100.