[manudude03]

Scoring: MP

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P-2S-4H-P
4NT-P-5C-P
6H-AP

Partner leads ♠J.

♠J-3-??

Declarer may or may not be making some off-beat bid to cater for gib partner

If you play the ♠Q, it holds. What do you lead at trick 2?

[JavaBean]

What tricks does declarer have? Two diamonds, for sure. At least seven hearts, I suspect. He must have the ace of clubs or he is toast no matter what I do. That's ten, and if he has ♦Kxx, he's up to twelve already. So instead give him, say, x AKJxxxx xx AKx. Now he has eleven tricks, and we are club-spade squeezable unless we break it up somehow; and with two entries in each minor suit I don't think it's possible. But adjust his hand to x AKJxxxx x AKxx, far-fetched though it seems, and we can break up the squeeze by playing diamonds to destroy his late entry to dummy. However, if we overtake to shift to a diamond, we are just setting up his ruffing finesse in spades! Instead we need to leave partner on lead and hope he can work it out, perhaps playing the nine of spades trick one to suggest diamonds.

Anyway, there seem to be a lot of variations, and I'm sure some of then require us to overtake and switch to something, but it seems to me like we're just setting up an extra trick in spades for him most of the time, and that may be number twelve.

[jukmoi]

If we overtake and try to cash ♠A then declarer will have probaly have 12 tricks if he holds singleton ♠. (7♥ + 2♠ + 2♦ + 1♣). Even if we fail to cash our spades tricks when declarer holds doubleton ♠ it is possible that he still goes down.

I think I will let partner to lead to second trick.

[rhm]

If declarer has a doubleton ♠ and 12 tricks you need of course to overtake and shoot back a ♠. This can happen in a number of ways:
When declarer has a singleton ♦, or the king doubleton or third in ♦.

Overtaking will cost whenever declarer has 11 top tricks and a singleton ♠, since his 12 th trick is now a ruffing finesse in ♠. This looks more likely.
(Killing dummy's entries by shooting back presumably a ♦ makes little sense, because you might as well not overtake the ♠ in this case).

The dangerous case is where declarer has 7 cards in ♥ and the doubleton king of ♦. In this case declarer has ten tricks in the red suits and your partner will need to hold the king of ♣.

Now when the jack of ♠ holds, a double squeeze is looming:
Partner will have to look after the fourth ♦, while you are the only one, who can look after the ♠ menace in dummy. Accordingly nobody can look after the ♣.
Your partner will have to switch to ♣ away from his king to break up the double squeeze, not an easy defense to find but entirely logical.
If West is an expert defender, he will deduce that this defense can not cost, even if you held the King of ♦ and declarer the ace queen of ♣, because declarer will not have enough tricks in this scenario.

Rainer Herrmann

[jukmoi]

I send a bone-headed post earlier. Over-taking and trying to cash ♠A can never be right compared to returning a small spade.

[manudude03]

Full hand here

Gib E ducked and then there was no way to stop the squeeze (well West let it through prematurely).