[inquiry]

Contract 6♠ by south

Opening lead ♣Q

Trumps split no worse than 3-1.

---

[rogerclee]

This is the kind of hand you give to a talented beginner to see if they can figure out "the trick" by themselves without ever having seen it before. I would expect most intermediate players to be able to solve this as a problem, so I voted 1.5

[karlson]

I think more people get this type of hand right than the one where you had to cash all your winners while in dummy and then take a finesse. That's probably because of the ubiquity of this type of problem in books and magazines.

[Mbodell]

karlson, on Feb 6 2010, 01:59 PM, said:

I think more people get this type of hand right than the one where you had to cash all your winners while in dummy and then take a finesse. That's probably because of the ubiquity of this type of problem in books and magazines.

When presented as a problem, sure. At the table many players will just attack diamonds themselves and hope the right cards are onside for ♦A and diamond back towards the Q to win. If you give east KJx of diamonds then in a typical club game I wouldn't be surprised to see more than a third of the field go down in the cold 6♠.

[hanp]

2.0

[inquiry]

At this time, there has been 14 votes, wtih an average of 1.75, which to be honest seems just about perfect score for this one to me. It is hardly necessary to post the full hand on these easy ones, but for completeness here it is....

Contract 6♠ by south

Opening lead ♣Q

Trumps split no worse than 3-1.

---

The line everyone sees is clear. Pull trumps, ruff a club, cash hearts ending in dummy. Take some form of a diamond finesse (diamond queen float is one way, all others work). This comes to something like this with WEST to lead.

Contract 6♠ by south

Opening lead ♣Q

Trumps split no worse than 3-1.

---