[FrancesHinden]

Scoring: IMP

1♣ 2♥ P P
x P 3♠ P
4♠ P P P

---

West leads the jack of hearts. East takes this with the ace, and switches to the 8 of diamonds.

Plan the play.

At some point I imagine you will play a club to the queen, that will hold - but your opponents are sufficiently good that I wouldn't be confident the king is onside.

[pclayton]

This is a rather fascinating hand and there are so many options, including winning the ♦A or ducking the ♦. I'm going to think about this for awhile and then post something.

[nige1]

FrancesHinden, on May 7 2008, 05:26 AM, said:

Scoring: IMP

1♣ 2♥ P P
x P 3♠ P
4♠ P P P
West leads the jack of hearts.  East takes this with the ace, and switches to the 8 of diamonds. Plan the play.

At some point I imagine you will play a club to the queen, that will hold - but your opponents are sufficiently good that I wouldn't be confident the king is onside.

---

My guess: ♦A, ♣ finesse, ♠AQ .♣

• If LHO discards, then ♣A ♣ ruff.
  
  
• If LHO follows, then finesse again and hope for the best.

We are neither vul nor doubled, so we may as well try to make the contract
Perhaps opponents could have given us more problems by continuing hearts.

[FrancesHinden]

pclayton, on May 7 2008, 06:23 PM, said:

This is a rather fascinating hand and there are so many options, including winning the ♦A or ducking the ♦. I'm going to think about this for awhile and then post something.

go on, be a devil

At the table I only thought of one real line, which is Nigel's suggestion... but in the car we thought of lots of alternatives of varying possibility. We were also discussing if there is anything to infer from RHO's lack of heart continuation.

[pclayton]

FrancesHinden, on May 12 2008, 09:14 AM, said:

pclayton, on May 7 2008, 06:23 PM, said:

This is a rather fascinating hand and there are so many options, including winning the ♦A or ducking the ♦. I'm going to think about this for awhile and then post something.

go on, be a devil

At the table I only thought of one real line, which is Nigel's suggestion... but in the car we thought of lots of alternatives of varying possibility. We were also discussing if there is anything to infer from RHO's lack of heart continuation.

LOL, got wrapped in this last week and forgot to revisit it. I kind of like Nige1's line anyway

[gnasher]

If you take an early club finesse and it holds, you might try ♣A, club, and play for a crossruff. If East turns out to have Kxx, you can discard a diamond on the third club.

[FrancesHinden]

Oh well, this didn't exactly generate any interest.

At the table I thought for a while and Nige's line, which goes off (LHO is 2254).
In the car we were wondering about doing some very different things, such as ducking the diamond return and playing for some sort of cross-ruff, or cashing the CA once the queen has held...

I think they all go off as the cards lie, but that's an irrelevant sidelight to an interesting question.

[gnasher]

FrancesHinden, on May 21 2008, 10:49 AM, said:

Oh well, this didn't exactly generate any interest.

I was interested. I just didn't have many answers.