[inquiry]

Scoring: XIMP

You reach 6NT by south, no opponents bidding.

Opening lead ♥7 to ♥T and ACE.

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[wclass___]

I don't see any working squeezes, and endplay RHO with ♣KQJ+♥QJT ♦Qxx is too much hope for.

Playing for ♦Q to drop at the moment seems best to me.

[inquiry]

One common theme in many of the first 25 post was the vulnerable stopper squeeze. There were a fair number of such endings, and I have lots of them in my collection of hands. I picked one of the easiest ones as problem #1 which was straight forward easy to find one. That one rated as just between 2.5 and 3.0 in difficulty. Then I picked one of the hardest ones in the entire collection and presented it as problem #4. That one is nearly impossibly hard one to get (needing wishful thinking and a lot of luck just to get to the right position) which rated out at 4.47.

In between those two extremes were a number of other such endings (including this one). Such as #16 (vulnerable stopper/strip squeeze versus simple finessee), #2 which combined vulnerable stopper squeeze with what clyde love called a CLE squeeze (companion/lead/entry).

Order of their ranking
# 1 - 2.7
#16 - 2.92
# 2 - 3.78
# 4 - 4.47

This hand turns out to be a similar problem. In each case (sometime after some fancy footwork), you have 11 winners, and a threat similar to Qx in one hand and Ax in the other. The opponent is thrown in at trick 11 (or 10, as in this case) and is forced to lead away from the vunerable guard/stopper.

So in this hand, you have to either play for ♦Qx or you play for the person with the protected diamond Queen to be vunerable to a throw in. The chance of throwing someone in with ♣'s is not good (seems they might be able to unblock to avoid the problem). It is at least possible the lead of the ♥7 was top of nothing and EAST has the ♥QJT (where is the nine)? Anyway, before you consider playing for ♦Qx, you might try winnign a bunch of spades and see if it even possible someone could have a doubleton ♦.

The voting on this one is very light, and ranges from 1.0 to 4.5. I don't think for a minute this hand was easier than #1, although I might believe it was easier than #16. Anyway, the full hand was...

It turns out on the run of the spade suit, East comes under pressure in three suits (he doesn't know the ♣ situation, and in the real world, no one defended well enough to cause any real problems. But if West keeps two hearts and three diamonds after the spades are run, the postion will be....

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It turns out on the run of the spade suit, East comes under pressure in three suits (he doesn't know the ♣ situation, and in the real world, no one defended well enough to cause any real problems. But if West keeps two hearts and three diamonds after the spades are run, the postion will be....

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