[jahol]

You play good opponents (as you will see). You need some IMPs so that you bid small slam with the following cards:

Scoring: IMP

---

The bidding was

NORTH------EAST------SOUTH------WEST
1C (1)------ pass-------1H(2)-------2C(3)
2S-----------4C(4)------5C(5)-------dbl(6)
5D(7)-------pass-------5H(7)--------pass
5S(8)--------pass-------6S(9)--------pass

where
(1).....strong, 16+
(2).....natural, positive
(3).....natural
(4).....weak
(5).....club void probably
(6).....club values
(7).....cue bid, first round
(8).....do not like club values
(9).....want to play slam.

Actually, the slam is not bad at all after club lead and there are some chances also after other first leads. However, the merciless opponent leads D5 (natural leads, highest from doubleton, third from three or four, lowest from five) and your RHO plays DJ. How would you try to make the slam?

[Fluffy]

♥ KA, is nothign special happened like 9 falling ruff another high.

The plan is to lose only ♣A

[jahol]

Seems to me that even if oponents hearts are 3-3, you may have problem....if you ruff third heart high and trumph three times (provided that oponents trumphs are 3-1) finishing in dummy, you are able to discard both diamonds, but then you have to use the last trumph to get into hand and you will finish with

hand:......0---0---0---KQx

dummy:..x---0---xx--0

loosing club and diamond....or two diamonds....

[Free]

Duck the ♦, rest like Fluffy.

[jahol]

Ducking diamond, I can not give up one club trick as proposed...

[jtfanclub]

jahol, on Mar 8 2007, 05:12 AM, said:

Seems to me that even if oponents hearts are 3-3, you may have problem....if you ruff third heart high and trumph three times (provided that oponents trumphs are 3-1) finishing in dummy, you are able to discard both diamonds, but then you have to use the last trumph to get into hand and you will finish with

ruff a diamond to get back to hand.

[jahol]

Ah, you are right, I visualized the hands wrong.... you will make it this way, when H are 3-3. But you can make it even if H are 4-2 (it was the case).

From the bidding, the declarer expected clubs 5-5 with CA in RHO hand. From the first lead, he expected that diamonds are probably 3-3 with KQJ in RHO hand (looks like the first lead is from three cards in diamonds and the lead from Kxx would not be probably preferred to the club lead). If the trumphs are 2-2, H are probably 3-3 and there is no problem with making the slam. If the trumphs are 3-1, there are still chances to make the contract.

The declarer ducked first diamond and took the second round of diamonds with Ace. He tried trumph suit and LHO discarded club in the second round. Now the most probable distribution is 3-2-3-5 for RHO hand and 1-4-3-5 for LHO hand. The declarer cashed HK and played H10 overtooked with HJ (HQ is more probable to be in LHO hand and it was!)

The rest was simple. Small H was ruffed, trumph played back to dummy (removing last opponents trumph), small club and diamond discarded on two cold hearts. Small diamond was ruffed with last trumph in hand and CQ was ruffed with last trumph in dummy. The last trick was made with the cold diamond in the dummy....