[Ant590]

Scoring: IMP

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You reach 4♠ by north, and east leads the queen of diamonds.

You win the first diamond and play spade to Q, all follow.
Then spade Ace, and east produces the king.

It seemed to me that I might be able to cater somehow for funny hearts by ducking them at some point, but my Kxxx of clubs looks scary.

How should I plan to play it? I have no idea

[gnasher]

You're gin if hearts are 4-2 or better, or if you can make a club trick. Draw a third trump, then duck a heart. If they play a club, cover it with the 10 (or the 8?), then try to ruff the hearts good; if hearts turn out to be 5-1, you can still try for ♣A onside.

Edit: I'm not sure about cashing the second round of spades. If ♠K doesn't come down, what will you do?

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2010-April-19, 17:30

[Simplicity]

I'm not sure this hand is obvious at all

I would have taken the diamond, spade to the queen. Then once it holds followed with ♥AK and a heart ruff.

So long as hearts are 4-2 or better I think my chances are now excellent

[Free]

imo this hand is very simple. Opponents can only take 2 ♣ tricks when they're on lead, so you can afford to lose one more trick. Draw the last trump and exit with a ♥. You need to keep ♦K at this moment, because you need control just in case ♥s break 4-2. If ♥ break 5-1, you still have the possibility to play on ♣s (you'll have 2 entries).

[Ant590]

I think simon (simplicity) was saying not to take the second round of spades in his line?

[Ant590]

The movie for the hand is at http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer...3994-1270099150

There was quite a cute ending on my (wrong) line, where East has to keep a low diamond to avoid an endplay towards the end (note the lead was different to the one I stated in the OP).

[Simplicity]

Free, on Apr 20 2010, 06:12 AM, said:

imo this hand is very simple. Opponents can only take 2 ♣ tricks when they're on lead, so you can afford to lose one more trick. Draw the last trump and exit with a ♥. You need to keep ♦K at this moment, because you need control just in case ♥s break 4-2. If ♥ break 5-1, you still have the possibility to play on ♣s (you'll have 2 entries).

Yes the hand is simple once you know there is no trump loser...

[Rossoneri]

I might be wrong, but I think you have to play for spades to have no losers? If the spade King is off you're probably off now anyway...