[inquiry]

NOTE: This one might be cooked. There is a winning line, but a few reasonble losing lines. Not sure if the winning line is the superior play. You can assume heart QUEEN is with EAST from the opening lead.

No bidding by ew.

3NT-6NT

Your 3NT promised a solid 7 card suit and a side Ace or king. Partner wasted the convention by not shooting for 6♣ which is cold, but put in a highly risky 6NT. Opening lead is the ♥9. Your play. Ideas?

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[wclass___]

Play clubs and watch their discards...

If i deduce from discards that east has ♦KQ, i can leave ♠A ♦ATxx in dummy and run ♦J. ( he should have ♥Qx ♦KQ +one crad left)

I have also good chances to make if LHO has ♦KQ, however if at the ending i leave ♠A ♦AT8 in dummy and play ♦J, i need 9 to be with RHO so that i could overtake his honor with A and establish ♦. (If RHO leaves only diamonds i can duck(♥ is unlikely and i may change plan if he discards many ♠ early)).

But there are quite a lot of possibilities what could happen, discarding is going to be tough.

[Hanoi5]

Since I'm at the table with the ♥A I'm playing a spade from dummy towards my ♠J. I don't feel confident at all about what might develop in fact I don't even know where the hand might head afterwards, especially if a diamond is returned. This one is pretty harder than the first one I think. I hope the answer is not as easy as 'play for doubleton ♦KQ'.

[Mbodell]

Well, I can't play a low ♦ else they'll win and play on spades cutting off the communications. I can't play a low ♠ to the J else they'll win it and play a spade and now after running clubs they can duck the ♦J and I'll be stuck and if I overtake the ♦J I'll be hosed as well, I think (absent maybe, east having every card and getting squeezed).

It seems like I have to play East for ♠KQ+♥Q (cash ♦A and run clubs leaving Ax♠ opposite Jx♠ with KJ♥ so east can either be thrown in in spades or forced to unguard hearts) or else East for ♦KQ+♥Q in which case I run the clubs and then run the ♦J (unless east unguard the ♥Q). In this ending east needs to keep KQx of ♦ and Qx♥ and a ♠ exit but only has 5 cards and thus may need to play a diamond back. But this only gets 12 tricks if the ♦9 isn't 4th or better with LHO. So I think I take the top line (cash ♦A and run clubs pitching 3♠ and a ♦). But these lines will be tricky to play right if East does unguard in hearts as I'll have to read that right.

[gnasher]

Mbodell, on Feb 1 2010, 08:31 AM, said:

or else East for ♦KQ+♥Q in which case I run the clubs and then run the ♦J (unless east unguard the ♥Q).  In this ending east needs to keep KQx of ♦ and Qx♥ and a ♠ exit but only has 5 cards and thus may need to play a diamond back.  But this only gets 12 tricks if the ♦9 isn't 4th or better with LHO.

I think your last sentence is incorrect: LHO will have been squeezed out of his fourth diamond on the last club. This is the ending:

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[phil_20686]

Am I missing something? It seems like the strip squeeze (IE cash clubs before ducking a spade/diamond) is essentially doomed to fail, as they should always be able to prevent you from cashing the heart king unless east is getting triple squeezed. If east is getting triple squeezed then you can just duck a spade and he will still be getting triple squeezed. This will happen when east has any 4 spades and the kq of diamonds.

Ducking a low spade immeadeately improves your chances in several respects. Firstly, while the defence can in theory always break up the double squeeze by attacking the entry in the suit held by both defenders, its a mistake to think that they will always find this defence. Switching to a low diamond from Qxx though ATxx vs slam is pretty tricky I think. This will be the necessary defence on any hand where lho holds 4 spades and rho the heart Q, as if a spade is returned, in the end game we have:

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And the defenders fate is sealed.


If your rho was dealt 4 spades and KQx of diamonds and the Q of hearts, he also has no defence, provided that south reads the position accurately.

You can also make on this line if lho was dealt the KQ of diamonds and 4 spades as he is simple squeezed on the run of the clubs, though i think this can be ruled out at imps by the failure to lead a top diamond.

[gnasher]

phil_20686, on Feb 1 2010, 04:49 PM, said:

Am I missing something

Yes.

Quote

It seems like the strip squeeze (IE cash clubs before ducking a spade/diamond) is essentially doomed to fail, as they should always be able to prevent you from cashing the heart king unless east is getting triple squeezed.

Look at the diagram in my previous post. You cash the last club, West throwing a diamond, North a spade, and East a spade. Then you run ♦J. West is endplayed to give you either an extra heart trick or two extra diamond tricks.

Quote

Ducking a low spade immeadeately improves your chances in several respects. Firstly, while the defence can in theory always break up the double squeeze by attacking the entry in the suit held by both defenders, its a mistake to think that they will always find this defence. Switching to a low diamond from Qxx though ATxx vs slam is pretty tricky I think.

East knows from the bidding and the lead that declarer doesn't have ♦K or ♠K. West also knows this, unless he can't read East's signal at trick one. It should be straightforward for them to switch to the suit that is held by both players.

[wclass___]

I thought about chances to make with ♣ play, if RHO has ♠KQx+

Generally you should play for this when LHO discards ♠'s, and RHO discards some ♦'s...

In this case you should leave ♠A9 ♦AT8 in dummy

a) If he has ♦9xxx he should discard all ♦, leaving ♠KQx ♥Qx

Play ♦J overtake and establish ♦. ( repeating same idea about playing LHO for ♦KQx, just different dummy)

b ) If he has K/Qxxx he will leave have more unpleasant situation. He can't discard all ♦ as i will simply cash ♥K and finesse ♦, if he ducks i still have an entry. If he leaves ♠KQ♥Qx♦H or ♠H♥Qx♦Hx. Play ♦A; ♠A; ♠. It is either endplay or cashing top trick.

c)xxxx

LHO can keep ♠x ♦KQ9 and i can't make with this line.

[inquiry]

My first thought on this hand was 11 tricks, East with heart Queen.... how about a compound squeeze? For more on compound squeezes, see Part II thread on squeezes, look for compound squeeze discussion about half way to the end of the thread .

For the compound squeeze, EAST has to keep ♥Qx, so he can not keep two cards in both diamonds and spades. Thus he will be able to guard only two of the three suits. The suit he abandons his partner will be forcd to guard alone, along with the other non-club/non-heart suit. I think this is the idea behind phil_20686's line of play when he corrected the count for a squeeze by ducking a spade a trick two. To be fair to him, he did note that the defense can break up the pending double squeeze (if it exist fairly or in the flavor of a compound squeeze) by attacking the entry to dummy in the doubly guarded suit. Phil's idea is certainly something that should occur to everyone looking at the hand. Because correcting the count is necessary for compound squeezes to work.

After playing around with the options of ducking a trick (obviously it has to be a spade), the defense can break up any pending single or double squeeze by their return (as Phil noted), so that line is doomed to fail against competent defenders. Thus, no double squeeze and no compound squeeze will work. To see a neat compound squeeze that works, and that you need to "correct the count" immediately on, you might want to look at the following post A nice little compound squeeze hand posted by yzerman.

Having eliminated the compound squeeze, you are back to lines of play like the ones proposed by wclass___, and in my opinion, this is the winning line. If you are going to play EAST for the ♦KQ and ♥Q as he proposes, one winning line is to the winning line is to cash ♠A at trick two (or before the club entry is used up)... note it is not required to cash the spade ace, it does however simplify in some ways the play. In the first example, I will cash the spade ACE and then run clubs... coming to the following....

On the last club, north has to decide, pitch a diamond and risk ♦A and ♦ forcing him to lead away from the ♥Q. Or throw a ♥ and risk you cash the two top ♥ and the ♦A.

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Now, like wclas___ suggested it will difficult to read north's hands correctly, but this is your only shot.

On the last club, north has to decide, pitch a diamond and risk ♦A and ♦ forcing him to lead away from the ♥Q. Or throw a ♥ and risk you cash the two top ♥ and the ♦A.

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There is a possibilty you could play EAST for ♠KQ and ♥Q instead of ♦KQ and ♥Q. The reason why I think that line is inferior, is that you also have to play East for either four spades (plus) or KQT tripleton.

Full hand was....

On the last club, north has to decide, pitch a diamond and risk ♦A and ♦ forcing him to lead away from the ♥Q. Or throw a ♥ and risk you cash the two top ♥ and the ♦A.

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[Free]

(@work so I may have overlooked quite a lot) I was going to start with a small ♠ to the J. Seems like RHO will be triple squeezed if he doesn't insert ♠Q. However, it's probably not as good a line as the compound squeeze on this hand...

[inquiry]

At the time of this (my summarizing this hand), there has been 26 votes, ranging from 1.0 to 5.0. The next lowest vote after the 1.0 was 3.0, and there were 12 votes for expert (4.0), so I think it is safe to throw out the vote for 1.0. That gives this problem an average score of 3.82. This means expert (3.5 would be lowest high level performing advanced player.

I think this is just about right. Some might argue to find the flaw the the compound squeeze and execute a hoped for vulnerable stopper squeeze/endplay would be in the range of an expert, or perhaps an advanced player who has studied these type of hands a lot.

[gnasher]

If "expert" means what it means on BBO, I think the vote vastly overestimates what most such players are capable of. I think that the chances that I'd find and successfully execute this play at the table are about 1 in 20. And if I did I'd be going straight to the bulletin office.

[PhantomSac]

So what was the right line? Ace of spades and then run clubs?

What about in the real world vs real opps, then I'm sure a spade at trick 2 is a better line, so I wouldn't feel too bad if you didn't do this at the table gnasher.

[gnasher]

PhantomSac, on Feb 3 2010, 10:35 AM, said:

So what was the right line? Ace of spades and then run clubs?

I think it's better to just run clubs without cashing ♠A. That keeps your options open, and makes it harder for them to defend deceptively.

[PhantomSac]

gnasher, on Feb 3 2010, 04:48 AM, said:

PhantomSac, on Feb 3 2010, 10:35 AM, said:

So what was the right line? Ace of spades and then run clubs?

I think it's better to just run clubs without cashing ♠A. That keeps your options open, and makes it harder for them to defend deceptively.

Yeah that seems much better