[Cyberyeti]

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You lead the ace of spades, partner plays the highly encouraging 10, plan what's likely to happen next.

[steve2005]

well if partner started with KTxxx of ♠ is likely making.
if parter has KTxx of ♠ its ♠ to K followed by ruff and cash A♣ -1.

i dont see much other play

[Cyberyeti]

steve2005, on 2013-March-16, 15:25, said:

well if partner started with KTxxx of ♠ is likely making.
if parter has KTxx of ♠ its ♠ to K followed by ruff and cash A♣ -1.

i dont see much other play

Assume partner has spades headed by KJ10 for the signal.

[WGF_Flame]

play spade, hopefully can get a trump.
At first I thought you should cash the ac first but this can sell the contract if declarer has somthing like xx akjxxx x xxxx
in such a case partner after winning the spade should switch to trump (not easy but possible)
A side point to you is that normally with kj10 you play the j, so 10 deny the j.

edited: declarer can make anyway with that 2614 if he guess the diamond.

[inquiry]

Can we assume with ♠KJTx(x) partner would encourage witth the Jack, or might he play the jack as an alarm clock play?

Assuming parnter's play denied the ♠J and declarer didn't drop it, you can score two spades. The spade ruff is iffy. Surely declarer has six or seven good hearts on this auction. It is not clear why he didn;t just bid 4♥ immediately over 1♦, as the most he has outside of hearts is the spade jack and the club queen. Anyway, the correct defense to save a valuable trick at matchpoints is to cash the ♣Ace before continuing spades. The danger is if you continue a second spade immediately, partner will try to give you a ruff or trump promotion with a third round of spades. You can see that the trump promotion idea is dead on arrival.

There is a a chance declarer will ruff the club ace, but that seems remote, compared to declarer taking 6/7 hearts and enough diamonds (and the established spade queen) for an overtrick if you continue spades immediately and declarer only has ♠Jx.... and this defense still results in down one if declarer has a third spade and a club.

[Cyberyeti]

I said partner has spades headed by the KJ10, he actually has KJ10x, (this was my opps) the point I was trying to make was that you can cash the A♣, or you can allow partner to take the J♠ but you must ruff his K to lead the A♣ if you play a second spade as otherwise he'll try to promote you a trump and declarer's club will go west on the diamonds.