[FrancesHinden]

My dreams aren't as exciting as Justin's. This time you are East, defending 3NT by South. (This hand sort of came up at the table, but the layout wasn't quite the same as in my dream...)

Scoring: IMP

1♦ P 2♦ P
3NT all pass

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Partner, playing standard leads, leads the jack of hearts. Dummy plays low. What do you play?

[the hog]

I suspect declarer needs only 1 black suit trick to make 3NT. I hope partner has led from AJTx, so I play the Q. With my regular pd I would play the 3 as he would know to continue, and besides I like torturing him!

[flytoox]

The_Hog, on Jan 2 2007, 09:46 AM, said:

I suspect declarer needs only 1 black suit trick to make 3NT. I hope partner has led from AJTx, so I play the Q. With my regular pd I would play the 3 as he would know to continue, and besides I like torturing him!

This is SO unlikely. If that is the case, then declarer should have about 6-7 diamond tricks. In that case pd, with short diamond and some high cards, would make a takeout dbl.

The declarer is more likely to have a routine 18-19hcp balanced hand. In this case, it would be better to play a passive defence.

I simply play H8 encourage.

[Codo]

I cannot believe, that pd has led from Jx to find my suit, so I really see no sense in discouraging hearts and play an encouraging 3.

[FrancesHinden]

Here's why I had this dream.
It followed on from another dream, in which I was declarer in 3NT on this layout:

---

After the HJ lead, and ignoring RHO's card at trick 1 for the time being, there seem to be 3 ways to make the contract:

1. Hope hearts are 4-4, blocked (virtually impossible) or 6-2 with someone having AQ or Ax and the CA

2. Hope when you confidently play a club towards one hand or the other that someone ducks by accident

3. Play LHO to be
J10(x)(x)
J109xx(x)
anything
Ax(xx)

i.e. to have 5+ hearts, the J10 of spades and the ace of clubs. On five rounds of diamonds they are triple guard squeezed in some sense. Squeezed out of their 5th trick, anyway.

Unless you are playing for line 2. you will start by cashing 5 rounds of diamonds anyway, but then you have to make a decision. This will be influenced by their discards, and the play to trick 1.

If RHO plays the Q at trick one, based on the responses above, you will generally assume it is not from Qxxx, or AQxx (or indeed AQ) so although line 3 is unlikely, it's the best shot.

So I think, given that partner doesn't make short suit leads on this auction, you should play the HQ at trick 1 from pretty much any holding in order to leave declarer in the dark.

[These are all dreams because in real life 3rd hand had Q8x AQx xxx AJ9x and the contract was boringly off whatever. But I thought declarer should have played for the squeeze]