[inquiry]

Scoring: xIMP

1♠ = 2♥
2♠ = 3♠
4♠ = 4NT
5♠ = 6♠
pASS

opening lead club JACK

---

After your aggressive (crazy?) 1♠ opening bid, your find yourself slowly dragged to dangerous heights. If you stumble here and go down, you will lose a ton of imps (the normal look 4♠ surely will make). Well, ok, these kind of overbidding potential disasters happen when you open 1♠ on two bullets and out like this one... but this is not a bidding problem (well other than for people who choose to open 1♠ so light), but rather a play problem. What is the best strategy for this hand? If you just can't stand being in 6♠ imagine then 4♠ at matchpoints.

[hrothgar]

I think you're main concern needs to be avoiding a heart loser.

Win the King of Clubs, cash the Ace of Diamonds and exit with the Queen of Diamonds

[FrancesHinden]

We need either the diamond finesse or the spade finesse, but it looks as if we need to decide now which it is.

If we win the club and taking a losing spade finesse, a heart comes back and we need Kx of diamonds onside as we only have one entry to hand. Taking the spade finesse at once seems at least as good as playing diamonds from dummy now, which loses to a bad break.

This line needs the spade finesse OR Kx diamond onside.

We could overtake the club to take a diamond finesse, and if that holds continue spade to the ace, diamond to the jack, ace of hearts, ace of diamonds (heart pitch), ace of hearts, cross-ruff. This also needs 3 rounds of diamonds to stand up, or the third round to be ruffed with the SK, or the SK to be singleton.

If the diamond finesse loses we aren't off yet, although we now need spades 2-2 with the king onside or singleton king (take one finesse and ruff two clubs in dummy).

This line seems better: it needs the diamond finesse OR spades 2-2 with the king onside OR singleton K onside MINUS early red suits getting ruffed.

[inquiry]

I think Frances has it... If the club King was the club 2 everyone would have made 12 tricks after a club lead... the club king is a red herring.

[FrancesHinden]

Jlall, on Nov 14 2006, 11:06 PM, said:

The flaw with the Frances/Ben line is when RHO ducks the DK while the spade finesse was on all along. The chance of this happening is hard to quantify, but against most people it is probably 0-1% so it would be fine. If Zia was on our right, would that change things?

Yeah, I did think of this.... but then I decided it's irrelevant.

I'm taking the diamond finesse in the hope it's right. If it's not right I shall go off with spades 3-1 and the king onside. That was my decision when I decided to take it the first time. That's true whether I lose the finesse the first or second time I take it; the only difference is that I'm crosser if it happens the second time!