[Mbodell]

Last round and you are playing your 1 round to go competition for 1st on the night (rotated). With careful planning can you make this contract?

Scoring: MP

The bidding goes:
P-P-1NT*-4♥;10-13 HCP
5♦-X
All Pass

Opening lead 5♥

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Plan the play.

As usual Adv/Exp please don't post spoilers too early.

[kenrexford]

This is way more difficult than I initially thought.

Spoiler

Ruff-diamond-diamond-possiblethirddiamond-ruff. Now Ace-out in spades. If I catch RHO with Kx in spades and Kx/Ax/KQ(x+) in clubs, he must break clubs unfavorably for him. If he leads K/Q, I duck and leave him in.

If RHO has Kxx in spades, he probably rises and exits spade. Now, I play him for Kx or Qx in clubs, playing Ace and out a club. If he drops honor under my club Ace, I cross back to lead at the Jack.

An interesting counter-attempt is when he has Kxx in spades and Kx/Qx in clubs, winning the spade King to first cash a top club in the face of this dummy, but that's a no-gainer for him in the end either. If he has Kxx in spades and KQx in clubs, he wins no matter what.

Another possibility, though, is for RHO to drop the spade King under the Ace. He could have Kx or even K10x/KJx for this move. In the latter event, he merely delays the inevitable, if I play to through LHO in anyway.

What happens if I do through LHO in on the third spade? If the suit does actually break 3-2 (and the K play was an intentional jettison), LHO can make me guess what is going on. I could play him for 109 and no K/Q, in which case I can ride a small card to my 8, but a cover of a high card with the Jack leaves me down. So, I still need to play RHO for Kx or Qx and rise-exit. Therefore, RHO has a solution for Kx-KQx, namely to jettison the King. Therefore, it looks like I need RHO to have Hx in spades from the start.

If that is the case, then I can in theory just as easily win the spade Queen on the second play of the suit before playing Ace and out in clubs, leaving the spade winner to my left intact. If that happens, this could be more interesting. After RHO wins the second club, he must play a heart when it matters. I can ditch a club from dummy and a spade from hand. Then, I ruff the next heart on dummy to ditch a second spade from hand. If diamonds broke 2-1, this leaves me with one more trump to take care of my losing club. So, it seems that I can recover when the spade King was a legitimate stiff, if RHO has 1-8-2-2 shape.

I keep thinking that somehow there may be some sort of Ottlik-style play to handle RHO with 1732 pattern, but I cannot work it out in the amount of time I am willing to invest. Some other strange layouts might also lead to interesting possibilities.

[Mbodell]

kenrexford, on Nov 1 2008, 12:44 PM, said:

This is way more difficult than I initially thought.

Spoiler

Ruff-diamond-diamond-possiblethirddiamond-ruff.  Now Ace-out in spades.  If I catch RHO with Kx in spades and Kx/Ax/KQ(x+) in clubs, he must break clubs unfavorably for him.  If he leads K/Q, I duck and leave him in.

If RHO has Kxx in spades, he probably rises and exits spade.  Now, I play him for Kx or Qx in clubs, playing Ace and out a club.  If he drops honor under my club Ace, I cross back to lead at the Jack.

Trump are 3-0 with LHO.

Spoiler

Ken's line above is correct. Unfortunately, I cashed trump A K Q (not the wisest as trump can't provide transportation - which would have worked when LHO dropped a heart on the spades) and now when RHO does have Kxx of spades I cashed all 4 rounds of spade (not good). Now when I played club-low-ace-King! and RHO correctly stuffed me up by jettisoning the K of clubs from Kx and I was stuck on board losing to the QT of clubs with LHO.