[Echognome]

This hand came up playing with Phil against Han and Arend. I thought it was an interesting hand at the time, but it wasn't until later that I saw that the hand had more depth to it.

Scoring: IMP

(P) - 2♠ - (3♣) - 3♦;
(P) - 4♦ - (P) - 5♦;
All Pass

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You reach the inferior game of 5♦ rather than the laydown 3NT (feel free to gripe quietly to yourself how poor the bidding was). You get the lead of the ♣3 to the 2 and East's Jack.

Over to you for now...

[MarkDean]

I win the ace and play another club. If RHO has 7 clubs, I plan on winning the likely trump continuation, and playing another club pitching a heart from dummy, hoping to ruff two hearts. If RHO has two trumps, it really increases the chances of the spade hook, and I fall back on that.

[Codo]

3 Club sounds like a strong bid, so the spade finesse is off.

I like the idea of a second and third round of clubs. When they return two rounds of diamonds to cut down my heart ruffs, I win both rounds in my hand and play ace of spade spade to bring down KX in that suit.

[flytoox]

looks like loser on loser play.

[Hanoi5]

How about winning the first trick and playing a small heart? If they return anything but a trump I get to ruff my two losers and if they return a trump I ruff a heart and reach:

♠AQ9
♥
♦
♣9

♠2
♥
♦T
♣Tx

As I'm playing RHO to have the ♠K I'll watch his discards and if it isn't safe to lead a club and promote my 10 (no ♣Q or ♣K has shown up), I'll just lead my last diamond tossing the spade 9 from the table to either endplay RHO or drop his singleton ♠K.

[gnasher]

Two possibilities:

(1) Duck the first club. They probably have to play a trump. Win in hand, duck a heart, win the return, ruff a heart high, get back to hand, cash the trumps for a simple squeeze in the black suits. No card-reading is required, but I may suffer a club ruff.

(2) Take the first club and duck a heart. Win the trump switch in hand, ruff a heart high and cash the trumps to strip-squeeze East. I'll have to read the layout correctly, without having seen what West does on the second round of clubs.

With either line, West might win the heart and switch to a spade through dummy. This forces me to try to take two ruffs in dummy, with some risk of being overruffed in either hearts or spades. If I ruff a heart before a club, I can't ruff it high, because I need ♦K to overruff West in clubs. Hence I should play to ruff the club first - this is one reason for ducking a heart rather than playing ace and another.

However, we're still not out of the woods: West might ruff the club with a middle trump to force dummy's king. If I overruff, I may then be overruffed by East in hearts.

In that case [nearly finished], I want to be able to discard a club from dummy when West ruffs in. To do that I have to have not ducked a club, so I should play line 2, as long as I'm reasonably confident of being able to read the ending.

I'm not sure that I would have worked all of this out at the table.