[gnasher]

1♠-2♣
2♦-4♠

---

2♣ = clubs, diamonds or balanced (game-forcing unless balanced)
2♦ = minimum, not four hearts

They lead ♣7. Their leads are 4th from an honour and second from three small or longer.

[dellache]

What are the club spots in my hand and in dummy ?

[Jlall]

How about win the jack, club to the king, king of spades unblock the 6, spade to the ace. If the queen drops then cash a club pitching a heart and hook the diamond. If the queen does not drop just hook the diamond.

Just my instinctive line maybe there's something better.

[gnasher]

dellache, on Oct 29 2009, 09:44 AM, said:

What are the club spots in my hand and in dummy ?

They're lower then the seven, obviously. If it makes a difference, assume that they're the 2 and the 3. Likewise with any other card that I represented with an x.

[Jlall]

Jlall, on Oct 29 2009, 03:48 AM, said:

How about win the jack, club to the king, king of spades unblock the 6, spade to the ace. If the queen drops then cash a club pitching a heart and hook the diamond. If the queen does not drop just hook the diamond.

Just my instinctive line maybe there's something better.

Slight improvement on this is to cash the SK before the CK in case LHO has stiff queen so you have a re-entry. Don't worry, LHO doesn't know your spades so will not falsecard the SQ with QT or Q9

[dellache]

Cannot see better than what Justin suggested.

[pooltuna]

gnasher, on Oct 29 2009, 03:37 AM, said:

1♠-2♣
2♦-4♠

---

2♣ = clubs, diamonds or balanced (game-forcing unless balanced)
2♦ = minimum, not four hearts

They lead ♣7.  Their leads are 4th from an honour and second from three small or longer.

A feasible, albeit maybe not the best, line
1)J or A♣
2)x♣
3)A♠
4)A or J♣ pitching a ♥ from dummy
5)T♦

[mikeh]

I see two lines... the one espoused by Justin and this one:

There are slightly more holdings, consistent with the lead, on which the club Q is on our right than on our left....and leaving aside individual proclivities of opening leader, this makes the club hook more probable than the diamond hook. (I am assuming he'd lead 2nd best for 5 small as well as from 3 or 4 small).

The Justin line, and similar lines starting with ducking the lead in dummy, essentially require the diamond hook to win. Detailed analysis available on request This is in addition to something reasonable in trump.

So consider winning the club K in dummy, hooking the club jack, taking a heart pitch and now running the diamond 10.

If it loses then:

If they return a diamond, we play spade to the J, then the spade A then back to the K...winning when spades are 3-2 with the Q onside... a layout on which the main lines lose whenever RHO has Qxx.

If they play something else, we get to play spade K and then low to the J (we can sometimes cater to stiff Q in LHO)...again, basically winning when spades are 3-2 with Q onside. However, if LHO had 3 clubs (97x or 87x) then a 4th round of clubs might be a problem...usually not since if clubs are 3=5, then the spade length is likely to be on my left, and I'd need rho to be Qx in any event.... I can't make with Qxx in LHO.

If the hook wins, we have to rely on our table presence to determine if rho ducked, as he usually should. Against weak opps, I'd assume the hook was working, and I'd cash the top spades, ending in hand, and repeat the diamond hook unless the spade Queen had dropped doubleton.

otherwise, I'd abandon diamonds and play spade to the K, spade to the J..... even if it loses, I can still sometimes prevail..altho I am no longer a favourite. The situation at this point is complex.

At the table, I'd probably opt for the Justin line. If it is inferior, it is by a tiny amount (I think), and it avoids the embarrassment of going down at trick two. I think most players, if given a choice between two finely-balanced lines, will choose to delay the bad news

The main reason for posting this line is to let my opps and partners know why I sometimes go into the tank for such a long time at trick one. I do actually think this way sometimes

of course, when I do, I often find later that I've missed something...maybe I did here as well...but... note...there are minor wrinkles I consciously chose not to discuss in this post.

[Jlall]

If Qx of spades drops then you are definitely better than just on a diamond hook. Say LHO has Qx, after you pitch a heart you run the DT. If RHO ducks the king you just claim, so they must win. Now you are cold unless RHO has a doubleton heart and can overruff dummy (or if they had stiff DK).

If RHO has Qx you are not in such great shape, but as long as long as the 3rd round of diamond can live you are ok (if they make dummy ruff then you can ruff the third diamond back to hand, if they don't you can cash 3 diamonds pitching a heart and play a trump to pull trumps).

[gnasher]

mikeh, on Oct 29 2009, 06:09 PM, said:

There are slightly more holdings, consistent with the lead, on which the club Q is on our right than on our left

I don't think that this difference is slight. The 3- 4- and 5-card holdings containing the queen where he'd lead the 7 are:

Q107
Q97
Q87
Q1087
Q987
Q10876
Q10875
Q10874
Q9876
Q9875
Q9874

That's 3/56 of the 3-5 breaks, 2/70 of the 4-4 breaks and 6/56 of the 5-3 breaks.

[mikeh]

gnasher, on Oct 29 2009, 01:11 PM, said:

mikeh, on Oct 29 2009, 06:09 PM, said:

There are slightly more holdings, consistent with the lead, on which the club Q is on our right than on our left

I don't think that this difference is slight. The 3- 4- and 5-card holdings containing the queen where he'd lead the 7 are:

Q107
Q97
Q87
Q1087
Q987
Q10876
Q10875
Q10874
Q9876
Q9875
Q9874

That's 3/56 of the 3-5 breaks, 2/70 of the 4-4 breaks and 6/56 of the 5-3 breaks.

I assumed he'd lead 4th best from 10xxx(x) and 3rd from 10xx.

So the holdings where he lead from a non-Queen seem to me to be:

976
975
974
9765
9764
9754
97654
876
875
874
8765
8764
8754
87654
1087 (which is not a holding from which many would lead)

That makes it 15-11 that he lacks the club Queen(you have 11 examples for the Queen), if we ignore tendencies such as whether LHO likes aggressive or passive leads on such auctions...leading from the Queen would be the more aggressive choice. We are also ignoring relative frequencies of 5-3, 3-5 and 4-4 splits, treating each combination as equally-possible... which seems like a reasonable approximation this early in the hand.

If he'd lead 7 from 107x(x)(x), then this increases the non-queen holdings significantly, but I think most opening lead theorists treat the 10 as an honour. I think I'd ask the opps about this, at the table, since giving them the information implicit in the question seems risk-free.

[Cyberyeti]

gnasher, on Oct 29 2009, 01:11 PM, said:

mikeh, on Oct 29 2009, 06:09 PM, said:

There are slightly more holdings, consistent with the lead, on which the club Q is on our right than on our left

I don't think that this difference is slight. The 3- 4- and 5-card holdings containing the queen where he'd lead the 7 are:

Q107
Q97
Q87
Q1087
Q987
Q10876
Q10875
Q10874
Q9876
Q9875
Q9874

That's 3/56 of the 3-5 breaks, 2/70 of the 4-4 breaks and 6/56 of the 5-3 breaks.

This may or may not be right, some people treat H98 as an honour combination and lead the 9, I know we do. It is not one that always appears on convention cards.