Posted 2006-December-22, 23:39
I will take a shot at it.
You WILL lose a ♠ and a ♥, and the ♣Queen rates to be with EAST on this auction. There is a chance for a 4-1 ♠ split, but if spades split badly then you are probably not making.
The bidding marks WEST with the RED suits, and he made a risky lead from K-fourth or longer in diamonds (would be useful to know if they lead 3/5 or 4th best as one line would be to ruff two diamonds in dummy, second one high, and finesse EAST for spade TEN... doesn't work if diamonds are 5422). WEST probably would probably have preferred a heart lead if his suit was headed only by the queen to the diamond lead, so we suspect WEST has the heart ACE because of his bid and his opening diamond lead.
So we think we have 2♣, 1♥, 2♦ and with spades behaving, 3♠. So we need two more tricks. One can be a diamond ruff perhaps but a second diamond ruff is not going to happen due to over-ruff or trump promotion problems. So we will need a third club trick. Luckily with AKJT between the two hands, we can always establish a third club.
So now we have a plan.
Pull trumps. lead a heart towards the king. eventually establish a club and ruff a diamond. My general line would be...
1. win diamond queen
2. Spade king (keep spade queen in case WEST has singleton spade ACE)
3. If West wins and leads a heart (best), pop up with the king. If minor win ACE.
4. Spade to jack, did both follow? If not, finesse east for the spade ten -but we really need 3-2 spades. So pull trumps (3-2).
5. heart to dummy now if not returned earlier.. give a club while transportation is fluid.
It is late here so i probalby botched this badly, but that is how i would play and why.
--Ben--
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