[cinvent77]

After partner opens 1♦ and you bid your hearts you have become declarer in 3♥.

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After LHO leads ♠Q, RHO cashes ♠AK then exists with a heart. I drew the trumps, cashed the clubs and then played ♦J. LHO produces the 2. I played the king and that was one off.

Of course LHO had the queen. No else went down in 3♥. The opponents insist that I need to take the diamond finesse ... I guess they mean "against the queen" rather than "against the ace". But ... why? Why is the finesse against the queen better?

Or shouldn't I be taking no finesse at all?

[pclayton]

I would tend to play RHO with the Queen, as you did, since RHO already has the ♠AK, as you did. With AK-A, he might have found a call over 1♦, but this is far from certain.

Playing off 3♣'s is a mistake; it gives LHO a count on your hand. What possible information can you get that helps?

Better to draw trump and put the ♦9 on the table. Its also appealing to do it immediately before drawing trump.

LHO will sometimes pop ace fearing a stiff. If LHO knows you have only a ♦ doubleton, playing an honor can never be right.

[inquiry]

If LHO has ♦Q and RHO has ♦A, finessing the queen allows you to make an overtrick, as RHO has AK doubleton of spades (apparently). Since either play is 50-50 more or less, at MP hook the queen is clear (this assumes that you did not cash all the clubs first, because if they could duck the diamond ACE otherwise and you would not have entry to the good diamond).

If you are playing to make the contrzct with no concern about an overtrick (ie, at imps) you can forget the extra trick issue if you like. You didn't say how trumps were split (they could even have been 4-1 by your description). If WEST has AQ, you can not go wrong (but you drop one trick if you play the king), if EAST has AQ you can not go right. But the odds seem exactly the same. If RHO was AK doubleton in spades and three small hearts, I don't think that gives you any inkling who has the diamond ACE.

Still, since odds of ACE or QUEEN with LHO are the same, the correct play is probably hook the queen as that gives you an extra trick (if you had kept an entry to dummy).

[brianshark]

He had no losers left to discard at that point. So there was no overtrick at stake.

[goobers]

cinvent77, on Feb 14 2007, 09:03 PM, said:

Or shouldn't I be taking no finesse at all?

It's not even possible to play that diamond suit without taking a finesse. Pick a card to lead from your hand at random, then pick a card in dummy from random, and tada, finesse!

You know something, when there's a 2 way finesse for a Q, or when there's a finesse like this against the Ace or the queen, and I have been unable to obtain a count on the hand or there has been no indication from the bidding or the anything revealing about the location of high cards to tell me how to play the suit, I just always play it the same way. It saves me a headache from trying to decide.

[inquiry]

brianshark, on Feb 15 2007, 09:21 AM, said:

He had no losers left to discard at that point. So there was no overtrick at stake.

Still has a spade loser as described.. RHO overtook the spade queen, cashed a spade and then exited with a trump.

[goobers]

Can we get an actual reproduction of what happened here?

Did we lose 3 spade tricks off the top? How did the trumps break?

[inquiry]

goobers, on Feb 15 2007, 12:54 PM, said:

Can we get an actual reproduction of what happened here?

Did we lose 3 spade tricks off the top?  How did the trumps break?

I guess we will have to wait for the poster to reply, but this was the wording...


After LHO leads ♠Q, RHO cashes ♠AK then exists with a heart.

To me, this reads as RHO wins the first two tricks with AK, then leads a heart. I guess it could mean

"After LHO wins the ♠Q, RHO takes the next two tricks with the ♠AK then exists with a heart. " or, "After LHO wins the ♠Q, the opponents win the first three tricks, RHO getting ♠AK before exiting with a heart".

But I read it to mean

"After LHO leads ♠Q, RHO overtakes at trick one with the ♠A, then wins the ♠K at trick two before existing with a heart."

It they took the first 3 tricks, either play in ♦ is perfectly the same.

[cinvent77]

I apologize for the ambiguous wording. This is what happened:

LHO leads ♠Q from QJ9x, all follow suit. Second trick: small spade from the left, RHO plays king and the ace on the third trick. Then (in the fourth trick) he exists with a heart.

I tried to rotate the hands on the first post. Here is the full original deal:

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And the bidding, with silent opponents:

North South
pass 1D
1H 2H
3H all pass

(South might have rebid 1NT, but that's not the point)