[CamHenry]

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(NB: you are South; dummy is on the right)
Partner leads the ♠5; dummy plays small and you win the Q. What's your defense?

[JLOGIC]

I am strangely drawn to the heart shift.

BTW did declarer play the 3 of spades at trick 1 or a different one?

[CamHenry]

JLOGIC, on 2013-May-08, 09:13, said:

I am strangely drawn to the heart shift.

BTW did declarer play the 3 of spades at trick 1 or a different one?

Declarer played the 3.

If you switch to a small heart, it goes 3-9-Q-A, and declarer then leads a diamond. If you play small, declarer wins the Q and plays the ♦A, then a small diamond. Partner follows 7-8-T, showing an odd number; you're on lead with the ♦K.

[ahydra]

CamHenry, on 2013-May-08, 09:30, said:

Declarer played the 3.

If you switch to a small heart, it goes 3-9-Q-A, and declarer then leads a diamond. If you play small, declarer wins the Q and plays the ♦A, then a small diamond. Partner follows 7-8-T, showing an odd number; you're on lead with the ♦K.

So I'm guessing declarer has 109 of hearts and 5 diamonds? In which case we have to play CAK now, surely.

My initial plan when I saw this was to play CA and switch to the DK if partner didn't encourage, but I wasn't confident enough to post it.

ahydra

[CamHenry]

Play the ♣AK, partner discourages (then shows even original count). What's your next card?

[JLOGIC]

CamHenry, on 2013-May-08, 09:30, said:

Declarer played the 3.

If you switch to a small heart, it goes 3-9-Q-A, and declarer then leads a diamond. If you play small, declarer wins the Q and plays the ♦A, then a small diamond. Partner follows 7-8-T, showing an odd number; you're on lead with the ♦K.

Looks like we have to run 4 clubs if declarer has T9 of hearts. It looks like we can disrupt their communication via, eg, spade to the ace and a heart back but declarer can win in his hand, cash his diamonds, and exit with a club. Since the spade and heart are good in dummy we still need 4 club tricks (and there's no tricks like squeezing dummy if partner has just the CQ. In fact declarer could just not cash all of his diamonds to avoid that if he wanted to).

I was hoping when I shifted to a heart that the hearts were anything other than T9 doubleton with declarer, I think it was a good shot.

[Winstonm]

I looks like opener is 2254 so I return heart, win third diamond then lead a spade to pard's A so pard can exit with a heart, or so I thought. Once again, Justin is right.

[CamHenry]

Partner's hearts were QT; I'm not sure why he played the Q. It doesn't cost, though, because your 7 is still a stop.

I thought of the ♥ switch afterwards, not that it particularly mattered. The contract's cold, as declarer has xx/98/AQ8xx/QJxx and always comes to 7 or 8 tricks. Thanks for the replies: it's nice to know that the ♥ play is (a) not pure resulting, and (b) "a good shot" was as much as I could manage. Holding declarer to 7 tricks was worth +1 IMP...

[rhm]

I did not comment yesterday, but I do not see the attractions of switching to hearts, even if you kill the ♠K.
If declarer has a singleton heart(unlikely), this is no good.
If declarer has a doubleton he can always and probably should duck the heart switch and he might well have the ♥Q.
I would switch to a diamond honor, preferably the ♦J.
This requires only that partner has ♦Q9xx or better. If he does not, probably nothing matters.
A low club switch requires partner to have something like ♣Jxxxx or ♣QTxx, which is unlikely when he led spades from Axxx.

Rainer Herrmann