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whereagles, on Dec 16 2007, 05:29 PM, said:
indeed. this is a nice, non-trivial problem. helene's line puts some pressure on the defenders (if they don't force dummy, it should be plain sailing), so maybe that's something to try out in practice.
It might be plain sailing, but then again it might not. Presumably if the jack of diamonds holds, you will draw trumps and repeat the diamond finesse - but if East is a strong player, the second diamond finesse might lose, whereupon you will go down at least one.
Leading a middle diamond at trick two and simply playing for 3-2 breaks in both red suits seems the most promising approach. If I have understood aright, the line chosen at the table - heart to the ace, club ruff, middle diamond - makes the contract on almost no distribution of the outstanding cards assuming half-way competent defence, so can safely be dismissed.
An alternative line - heart to the ace, club ruff, and three rounds of diamonds - appears to require a later successful guess in spades even if the queen of diamonds falls on the first two rounds of the suit. It is therefore indeed a "close second", but only to the original line in terms of futility, not to any sensible line in terms of probability of success.
