[brianshark]

This hand is from a face to face teams match (part of an ongoing league) I played last night.

Scoring: IMP

You are West, the bidding starts with North (your LHO):
1♦-1♠-2♥-P
3♦-P-3NT-All Pass

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The bidding was considered but in tempo. You know that your opponents are a pick-up partnership playing 5 card Majors and strong NT and mostly standard stuff. On asking North, 2♥ is assumed to be forcing (rather than a NFB or anything like that.)

After much consideration, you lead your singleton ♠. (What do you think of the lead btw?)

Declarer thanks dummy and spends a few minutes analysing the dummy. He then calls for the ♠T, followed by the ♠2 and ♠8. The ♠2 is attitude. He then leads the ♥T and East shows out by discarding the ♣2. Declarer asks you what the discard means and you reply 'count'.

Declarer then ponders for another minute or so, and lets the ♥T run to your ♥J (declarer playing the ♥4).

What do you do now? What's your next card, and how do you see the rest of the defense?

Edit: Silly me, forgot to post dummy...

[gwnn]

Could we analyze dummy?

[pclayton]

There are some good hands this morning

1. What's happening in spades? What doesn't pard have? Not the Q-J; he'd split. Not the A-Q; he'd win. A-J is tough; but pard really should win and fire a club. A-empty is the toughest, but that probably requires the same logic as AJ-empty. Q-empty is tough too, but he'd probably duck. So Pard probably has a real lousy suit, and it should be 6 cards in length.

2. Declarer certainly has a stiff or void diamond, otherwise he wouldn't be ducking a heart to me (what's the point?).

3. So I'm putting declarer on something along the lines of ♠AJx, ♥AK87x, ♦x, ♣????

This alone gives him 7 tricks. If declarer has the ♣AK; its 9. With the ♣Axxx, its silly to duck a heart to me; once you see the heart split, you have to go after ♦'s. How about ♣ATxx? There's some appeal to ducking the heart to rectify the count for a ♣/♥ squeeze against me, or an endplay. This would leave partner with a hand like: ♠Qxxxxx, ♥void, ♦Jxxx, ♣Kxx; barely enough for a one level overcall.

I haven't thrown away the idea of a diamond void either. My fear is that if I don;t do something active; with a stiff diamond, declarer might go after diamonds is I try something cute, like laying down the ♦Q.

So I will play a small ♣ (The Q makes it too easy to duck), and hope declarer duck's pard's (presumed) King, Will I get endplayed later? Possibly, but declarer is about to grab a 3rd trick ♥ if I don't get busy now.

The other possibility is that declarer is just wide open in clubs, but if thats the case, this is an easy hand to beat with a club shift.

(What's that...I just noticed pard's club pitch? This makes about zero sense with my construct of the hand, so I really don't know what's going on... )

I'm probably missing something here, so I'm really curious to see what happens.

[han]

I hope declarer has AJx AK87x x K10xx, so I'd better play a low club immediately.

[brianshark]

Scoring: IMP


1♦-1♠-2♥-P
3♦-P-3NT-All Pass

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I was declarer (south) in this hand. You may or may not agree with my 3NT bid or partner's decision not to support my ♥s, but 3NT we are in. EW were top Irish internationals.

I took the ♠ lead with the T and led a ♥ as it was the only play for a 9th trick that doesn't involve losing the lead. But when E showed out, I decided to duck and make W guess what to play as early as possible in the hand. (Conceding a ♦ end-plays them into playing ♣s). He decided to lead the ♦Q, which I also ducked and then led the ♦T... which I gratefully won and ran the rest of the tricks.

I just wanted to post his dilemma to see if others shared his line of thinking. Everyone here seems to be leading a club, and that knocks me -2.