[Thiros]

Swiss teams A/X

♦Q lead

Bidding: silent opps, we only showed our long hearts, not our club suit

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[rhm]

Essentially against best defense you likely need one out of two black suit finesses or if trumps do not break and you have a trump loser both finesse need to work.

I suggest:

Win and ruff a diamond. Play ♠T and if West plays low let it run.
If West has the ♠A and the ♣K he might not have kept silent in the bidding.
Also many West will not duck with the ♠A, knowing you still have a spade discard on the second diamond honor.
If East wins and returns a trump (best) win in hand and play a second spade.
If East wins with the ♠Q and returns a club cover an honor but otherwise play low. The club finesse can wait.
West in will have to return something, probably a red suit.
If a diamond, discard a spade and then try ace of clubs, club with the intention of ruffing your fourth club if necessary.
However if East switched to a middle club honor, you would simply draw trumps and give up a club.
If West returns a trump, win in hand and play your second spade.
When in dummy with the king of hearts and after a club discard on the diamond, you will have to decide whether to try for a third spade to stand up or the club finesse.
Probably a spade is better.
The defense has many ways of going wrong.

Rainer Herrmann

[Thiros]

Thanks for the input. In an event of lower stature, I probably would have picked a line similar to your own. Perhaps, being in an A/X game, I overestimated the defenders. Hard to know.

Spot cards not given in the OP are approx.

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T1 : ♦Q, A, 6, 2
T2 : ♦K, 3, ♠10, 4
T3 : ♣3, 5, 9, 10
T4 : ♦J, 8, 5, ♥4
T5 : ♥A, 8, 6, 2
T6 : ♥3, J, K, 5
T7 : ♣6, 2, Q, K
T8 : ♦9, ♠6, 10, ♥7
T9 : ♥Q, ♠5, ♠7, 9
T10 : ♠J, A, 8, 3
T11 : ♦7, ♠9, ♠Q, ♥10

[FrancesHinden]

 Thiros, on 2013-April-04, 22:03, said:

Thanks for the input. In an event of lower stature, I probably would have picked a line similar to your own. Perhaps, being in an A/X game, I overestimated the defenders. Hard to know.

It's not really about opponents' "stature" as such, it's extraordinarily difficult to duck the spade looking at the ace, and also could easily be wrong. You haven't told us the full auction, but from LHO's point of view, is it possible that you started with Jx AQJxxx x QJxx in which case ducking just lets the contract through?