[jocdelevat]

tough one for me. I see 8 tricks the nine one more of gambling for me than reading opps cards. So my play is pick the heart with q and play the clubs till opps put the ace. if return heart I take with ace and continue the remaining clubs in hand then go to dummy with a spade and play the rest of clubs. Till here I do not see a problem but from here is difficult. First I thought to play the last heart and let the opp to lead but too many bad things can happen:
1. opp may have 5 hearts so im down in that case(3hearts a diamond and a club)
2.opp may lead spade and Im down too.
So the only chance to make is to lead towards king diamond and hope the opp has the ace and no heart to return.

[Mbodell]

Yeah, just about the only lines I see is to play for 4/3 heart break with K♥ and A♦ in the west hand or else duck first round of ♥ (and maybe first round of ♠) and hope that you can throw RHO in and have him break the diamonds while ♥ are still stopped to give you K♦ no matter where A♦ is and possibly score 2♦ tricks if ♦ are lead at trick 2.

I think I should duck in case A♣ is with RHO and so is 2♥ in a 5/2 break. Now if RHO returns ♠ I can duck once and win the return on board (Q♥ if hearts) and drive out the A♣ while still having the K♠ entry and then exit a low diamond. I think this may pick up some of the times when RHO is 3244 or 3253 or 2254 or what not. And I don't think it loses much to any of the lines above where the first one wins.

But maybe I'm over thinking it.

[y66]

Don't see how we're making this unless clubs are 3-2, LHO has 5 hearts to king, and RHO has ace and another top diamond plus QJxx of spades.

If that's the layout, RHO will come down to something like QJ, ---, AHx, --- after 2 hearts, 5 clubs and 2 top spades and we can throw him in in spades.

That's a lot to ask and not exactly B/I. Must be missing something. Good problem.

[Mbodell]

bump. Any words on this one? I'm still unsure what the right line was.

[cnszsun]

I think the key is to protect ♠K as entry to cash ♣s (♣s are blocked if we are careful).
For that reason, we can't duck first ♥. If you do so, defence could start to attack ♠s. Then your ♠ entry is gone before ♣s are unblocked.
♥Q, ♣s to force out A, win opps' return in dummy, cash remaining ♣ honors, ♠K to hand, 2 more ♣s, and a ♦ to K.

[y66]

Like cnszsun's line n x better than mine. LHO can have 4 hearts.

[vuroth]

I hate reading through a problem and not "seeing" anything. It must mean I'm missing something pretty basic.

I can really only see 1 way to come to 9 tricks:
2 spades
2 hearts
1 diamond
4 clubs

For this to work, I need teh K♥ in West, A♦ in west, and clubs 3-2 (or 4-1 with the 10 singleton) and hearts are 4-3.

The immediate problem I see is tha tI only have one entry to my hand, ever (K♠).

(The diamond holding looks like it might give better than 50% chance for 2 tricks, if I could lead up to it enough times. Unfortunately, I have entry problems. I also have tempo problems - opponents may be able to take 2 hearts, 2 diamonds and a club before I can establish 2 diamonds)

So I play:
Q♥ (1)
K♣ (2)
Q♣ (3)
J♣, losing to the A
Win return, likely A♥ (4)
K♠ (5)
♣ (6)
♣ (7)
♦, losing to the A by W
lose ♥ to W
lose ♥ to W
West must now lead ♦ to my K, or ♠ to my A.