[vuroth]

Interesting hand last night. I thought a bit about it ATT, but I'm not sure I asked the right questions at the right times.

Scoring: MP

P P 1♣ X
1♠ P 1NT 3♦
3♠ P 3NT P
P P

---

Led the A♦ - dummy comes down:
♠J97643
♥A42
♦5
♣J32

Trick 1: ♦A, 5, 9, 2
Trick 2, I lead the 3♦

Ok, so 5 decision points - 3 bids, 2 leads. What should I have been thinking at each one, and if I went astray what was I overlooking?

Thanks.

W

[TylerE]

Auction looks ok. I switch to a ♣ at trick 2.

[Flameous]

I'd assume declarer has something like

Q
KJxx
QTx(x)
AQxx(x)

or a bit stronger. (Unless he never bids 1NT with singleton so has one club or heart less)

If this is right, I have to cash one spade and exit with a heart (or club but I don't want to finesse partner's ten)

Declarer shouldn't get 9th trick from anywhere.

[P_Marlowe]

Auction was ok, so was the lead of the diamond Ace.

If you continue with diamonds, it would be better to cash the king of diamonds,
you have 7 diamonds, declarer will have at least 3 with the Queen, from the
missing 3 diamonds you have seen 2.
If you continue diamonds, you plan to estaphlish the suit, if p showes out, he has
the chance to tell you something (worthwhile?), so a low diamond makes no sense
at all, since if p showes out, you have given up the tempo, and declarer still has
a stopper, if p does not show out, the low diamond did not cost.

Another point is, that most likely it does not really matter, what you will do a trick
2, you will usually beat the contract, they have at most 20HCP between them, and
declarer being bal., with few entries to dummy.
But playing MP, you may need to beat the contract -2 (see PS).

So if you dont likey to continue with diamonds, I would suggest, that you try to
kill the communication, and the only 100% entry to dummy is the Ace of hearts.

P controls clubs, you control spades and diamonds.

So it it is either diamond or hearts, most likely I would go with the diamonds.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: P did not double 3NT, which means, he wont have 6 or more HCPs, where
to draw the line is a bit hard to say, but given your 3D bid together with the
dummy, I guess p should have pulled the red card out of the box.
If p would have found the red card, -1 would be a good score for sure.

[bid_em_up]

TylerE, on Sep 8 2010, 07:50 AM, said:

Auction looks ok. I switch to a ♣ at trick 2.

I think a club switch is terrible.

Lead a heart instead. You know partner has at least 5 hearts. (3 in dummy, declarer did not open 1H so should only have 4 at most).

[hanp]

Partner didn't bid 2H after we doubled 1C, partner does not have good hearts. About the best partner will have is Q10xxx, in which case we should not play hearts.

[kayin801]

I'm okay with the auction but I might have just bid 2♦ over 1NT. I would also lead the diamond A.

The dangerous case in the play is Flameous' layout where partner has the ♣K and the ♥Q, and we don't want to give declarer any free finesses because he has no chance of making 9 tricks unless we pick off partner's honors. It might seem weird but I kinda like a low spade, ultra passive, which only seems to lose when partner has a singleton spade and a singleton diamond (and didn't bid?!). Sometimes partner has queen-doubleton spade and doubleton diamond and we have 10 tricks, and in all but the worst case we have 5 tricks since declarer has to let partner in to lead a pointed suit to us.

If we're looking to tie 600 for our diamond or NT game if its there, we also need to lead a spade since we need to find partner with the Q of spades and at least 2 diamonds.

[mgoetze]

With such a distributional hand I prefer to start with 1♦ rather than double.

[vuroth]

Thanks guys.

I tanked before trick 2, but couldn't decide what was going on, or where best to go. I felt like it was likely partner had a card, and decided to hope that meant declarer couldn't cash out.

Turns out declarer had 8 quick tricks in the rounds, and partner had the queen of spades. Pretty much anything other than a low diamond (giving declarer the 9th trick straight away) would have worked, though if declarer led a low spade through me I probably would have had to duck it.

I guess partner's play of the 9♦ means that he's single around half the time, which didn't occur to me at the table.

I actually didn't double because I was afraid they'd run to a safer contract.

Most tables played in 4♦-1 or 5♦-2, so 3NT= was a clear zero.

[TylerE]

I think the key to this hand is to trust declarer. They're not bidding 3N here without solid diamonds... They'll hold QTxx here prob. 80% of the time once partner drops the 9 at T1.

[bucky]

vuroth, on Sep 8 2010, 06:39 AM, said:

Interesting hand last night.  I thought a bit about it ATT, but I'm not sure I asked the right questions at the right times.

Scoring: MP

P P 1♣ X
1♠ P 1NT 3♦
3♠ P 3NT P
P P

---

I know this is not posted as a bidding problem, but X of 1♣ looks a bit odd to me.