[fred]

Scoring: IMP

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The contract is 4S.

The lead is a club.

How do you play?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[glen]

Nashville was tuff on spot cards

[cnszsun]

Just to have a try.
I don't know if we can handle trump 4-1, but if trump is 3-2, i will play like this:
Ruff ♣,
♠Q, if ducked, ♠J,
Ruff 2nd ♣ return,
♥Q,
if they win and force me to ruff 3rd ♣, i can go to dummy with ♥K and clear last trump and cash my good ♦s.

[Dwingo]

Ruff ♣. Play low towards ♥K. Plan is to ruff a ♥ on the table. Plan to give 2 trumps and 1♥ to make the contract.

[jtfanclub]

Dwingo, on Jul 31 2007, 01:47 AM, said:

Ruff ♣. Play low towards ♥K. Plan is to ruff a ♥ on the table. Plan to give 2 trumps and 1♥ to make the contract.

That seems like the only workable possibility to me.

[lowerline]

fred, on Jul 30 2007, 08:23 PM, said:

Dealer: ????? Vul: ???? Scoring: IMP

♠ K32 ♥ K2 ♦ 5432 ♣ 5432 ♠ QJ654 ♥ Q43 ♦ AKQJT ♣

The contract is 4S.

The lead is a club.

How do you play?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Ruff, ♠Q. Assuming they win and continue ♣, ruff again, then ♥Q. If this holds, draw trumps (assuming they are 3-2) and cash the diamond tricks (you make 4 spades, 1 heart and 5 diamonds). If the ♥A is won, ruff the ♣ return, ♠J, ♥ to king, ♠K, cash diamonds (now there are 11 tricks if trumps behave).

Steven

[helene_t]

Go for a ♥ ruff in dummy and allow opps to ruff one ♦. Just a vague thought.

[TimG]

If trumps are 3-2, ruff the opening lead and play the ♥Q. If the defense ducks, draw trumps (the defense can only force you once more when in with the ♠A, so you have enough trumps), you will win 4 spades, 1 heart and 5 diamonds.

If a defender captures the ♥Q, ruff the club return in hand and play trumps being careful to leave the ♠K in dummy. When the defense wins the ♠A and forces you, you will be able to cross to the ♥K to draw the last trump with dummy's ♠K.

[FrancesHinden]

The fairly "naive" approach of drawing trumps works fine if trumps are 3-2, as we have a trick to spare.

Ruff the club lead, Queen of spades.
- If the SQ is ducked, Jack of spades.
- If the SQ is taken, ruff the club return (or win whatever else is played) and cash the SJ

Either way you have 10 tricks now in various ways. One of them, as already pointed out, is to play the HQ. If they take it and force you in clubs you cross in hearts, draw the last trump and make 11. If they duck it you can, for example, draw the last trump and cash diamonds.


The real challenge is to make 10 tricks with trumps 4-1, without going off with trumps 3-2. At first sight there are still only 3 losers - 2 trumps and the ace of hearts. To hold the trump losers to 2 we need to avoid the hand with 4 trumps making 2 low trumps from diamond ruffs.

Let's see how the 'naive' approach works with 4-1 trumps
Ruff the lead.
SQ, let's say taken (we'll come back to ducked, but I think it's much the same whether the first or second spade is taken as we plan on playing two rounds).
Club ruffed.
SJ, someone blows. Oops. Now they have 2 trumps left and we have one in each hand. We can start playing diamonds, but they will ruff and force us, and we can't easily get to dummy to draw the last trump (we will need LHO to have the ace of hearts, the long trumps and only three clubs I think).

So what if we try and establish our heart entry to dummy first?
Ruff the club and play the HQ. I think life is very strange if that is ducked, but let's say for the time being it is taken and a club played back, ruffed.
Queen of spades from hand, taken.
Club back, ruffed (we've ruffed 3 times in hand now).
If we cash the SJ, and someone shows out, we are just off, even if they have only 3 clubs with the long spades. They ruff the fourth round of diamonds and play a heart, and we are stuck on dummy with a club loser.

What if we don't cash the SJ and start on diamonds? Someone ruffs and plays yet another club. We ruff high in hand, cross to the HK and cash the SK. This doesn't work either.

There's the alternative line of ruffing the club and starting on diamonds, but I worry I'm going to go off with trumps 3-2.

I think this needs more thought, but I need to do some work.

[lowerline]

I would still like to know what happened on this one...

[fred]

lowerline, on Aug 2 2007, 08:11 AM, said:

I would still like to know what happened on this one...

What happened was the former World Champion who faced this problem at the table failed to spot the correct play and went down. RHO was 3424 with both major suit Aces. I was asked if I could see any way to come to 10 tricks. I did and I liked the problem a lot so I posted it here.

The key is to lead all 3 of your major suit honors from your hand. The order is not really important, but you might as well start by drawing trump - lead the Queen or Jack of spades out of your hand. If you are allowed to win that trick, continue with the remaining trump honor in your hand. Later you must start hearts by leading the Queen of hearts out of your hand.

The people who posted responses made short work of this one (well done!), but I found the solution to be both elegant and counter-intuitive (which is why I like this problem).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com