[mikeh]

Scoring: MP

after a jacoby 2N auction against silent opps, you reach 4♥. LHO, a solid citizen, leads a trump.

What do you do at trick one, and why?

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Further points hidden

Spoiler

since LHO will not lead a trump from Kx, he either has Kxx or xx or x. The odds favour xx or x, so you play the Ace, and see RHO drop the King. On the second high trump, rho, who is an honest player, plays a discouraging spade. What next?

next is hidden as well:

Spoiler

There is no rush to play spades or diamonds. The mirrored distribution means you will probably have to get lucky in clubs anyway, so cross to the Ace and lead one up...if LHO has Kx in clubs, he will be endplayed.

LHO wins the K and exits the J, your Queen winning. What now?

Continuing with the hidden theme:

Spoiler

if you believe rho's signal in spades, that finesse is losing. Does this mean take the diamond finesse instead? There is a slight clue that LHO has that card as well, since he made what he obviously hoped was a neutral lead at trick one....maybe he has almost all his side's assets. More to the point, if the spade finesse is losing, why take it ever? Cash the spade A and exit the spade J. LHO wins, and is endplayed.... he either leads diamonds inot your KJx or gives you a ruff-sluff. I liked this hand, which came up in a club game on Friday....apart from the club play, where we have little choice, the hand offered 3 losing finesses and the key to the valuable overtrick was to reject all three!

[vuroth]

Nice. Thanks for sharing.

[pooltuna]

mikeh, on Jan 18 2010, 02:02 AM, said:

Scoring: MP

after a jacoby 2N auction against silent opps, you reach 4♥. LHO, a solid citizen, leads a trump.

What do you do at trick one, and why?

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[snip]

On the most probable auction a ♥ lead only makes sense from xx or Kxx. So I go up with A. If RHO shows out then at least the ♦ and ♠ finesses are more likely to work on 10 vs 13 blank spaces basis.