[FrancesHinden]

jtfanclub, on Aug 4 2007, 04:14 PM, said:

Low diamond towards the nine, do not cover if West plays an honor.

If whoever continues a SPADE, I work on CLUBS
If whoever continues a HEART, then I continue with DIAMONDS

This line is slightly different, but not massively so, from the basic "play on clubs" line.

You win the spade return and start on clubs. If clubs transpire not to play for four tricks, you revert to ace and a diamond towards hand. Compared to playing on clubs immediately:

- You GAIN when LHO has Kx of diamonds
- You LOSE when RHO has the second club trick and the king of diamonds to 3 or more.

I'm not sure which of these is more likely

[jtfanclub]

FrancesHinden, on Aug 6 2007, 11:05 AM, said:

This line is slightly different, but not massively so, from the basic "play on clubs" line.

You win the spade return and start on clubs. If clubs transpire not to play for four tricks, you revert to ace and a diamond towards hand. Compared to playing on clubs immediately:

- You GAIN when LHO has Kx of diamonds
- You LOSE when RHO has the second club trick and the king of diamonds to 3 or more.

I'm not sure which of these is more likely

If you do the clubs first, you lose when LHO has the Kx(x) of diamonds, or the JTx(x) and his partner is smart enough to dump the diamond king under the ace.

If you do the diamonds first, you lose your entry to the clubs when you need it.

I am not yet convinced that ducking the diamond first ever loses. If West has at least three diamonds with at least two honors including the king, then you can't set up a diamond no matter what happens. The important thing is, since you ducked a diamond to start, East can't get to West's hand with a diamond because East has at most two diamonds.

[skjaeran]

FrancesHinden, on Aug 6 2007, 05:57 PM, said:

I've now thought of another line, that looks a bit strange:
Cross to the ace of clubs and play a diamond to the 8.
Win the spade* return and play a diamond towards the 9, covering LHO's card and playing a third round.

What does this do for various diamond holdings?
- It picks up all 3-2 diamond breaks except KJ10 on your left
- It picks up all 4-1 diamond breaks with length on your right (even if you lost to singleton honour on your left, you only have one more loser)
- It also picks up 5-0 diamonds on your right

With spades 5-3, these three add up to over 88%. If spades are 6-2 they are even better.

*If they don't play a spade back, you still play a diamond towards the 9, but now you are picking up 4-1 with length on your left as well as everything else. But that would be a mis-defence. The only genuine extra chance is spades 6-2 and singleton diamond king on your right. I think we can ignore that for the odds calculation.

That's better than everything anyone has thought of so far, I think.

Can it be improved even further?
You'd quite like to cash the CK as well, incase someone has Qx of clubs. The problem is that after CK, CA, diamond to the 8, heart back, diamond to the 9, heart back, you can't get back to hand to cash the diamonds. So if they happen to play a spade back after winning the first diamond, it isn't going to cost to cash the CK before playing another diamond. That's another mild misdefence-extra-chance.

I'm sticking with this line!

I was going to propose the same line, when I read the OP today, but Frances beat me to it.