[sathya]

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From the All Western 2-day Regional Pairs event in Santa Clara.

I remember the warning in a document on "Distributed Cache Protocol" a long time ago. "Don't start reading this when you have a headache as you're going to get one before you finish reading it".

T1: ♣T. 8, 6 from you playing UDCA, K
T2: ♥7, 2, Q, T (Reverse Smith)
T3:♦4, 2, Q, 3

T4-T7, ♥ discarding 2 ♠ and a ♦ from dummy. Partner follows with 5, 6, 9. On the last one, he discards the ♠3. You in the meanwhile have discarded 2 ♣ and ♠5. Now declarer plays ♣Q, pd following with 2 and then ♣7 to the Ace, as pd follows with the 4. You discard a ♠ on ♣Q, You're now down to ♠QT ♦KT5 and need to find a discard on the last ♣. What shall it be ?

[gnasher]

Assuming declarer is 1543, partner has kept a club winner, a diamond, and ♠Hx or ♠AK. Partner has ♦8 or ♦J, because with AQJ8 opposite 9xx declarer would have taken a second diamond finesse earlier.

If declarer has ♦AQJx I should throw a spade, regardless of the spade position.
If declarer has ♦AQ8x and ♠K, I should throw a diamond, to stop declarer getting another spade trick.
If declarer has ♦AQ8x and ♠A, it doesn't matter what I do.

If all layouts were equally likely, I'd throw a spade. However, there are three pointers in the other direction:
- When following to hearts and clubs, partner played his lowest card at every opportunity. I think that's suit preference, showing something in diamonds.
- Partner encouraged spades. I think he should only do that with the ace - I already know he has a spade honour, and he knows I know.
- A AKJxx AQ8x KQx is probably a 2♣ opener, and A AKJxx AQJx KQx certainly is.

Hence I throw a diamond.

[gnasher]

Another quite likely possibility is that partner has ♦A, giving declarer ? AKJxx QJxx KQx. Against that layout we should also throw a diamond. If we throw a spade, he plays a spade to the ace and exits a diamond, scoring a spade trick. Or if he has ♠K instead of ♠A, he exits with the spade.

[sathyab]

gnasher, on 2013-September-04, 02:29, said:

Assuming declarer is 1543, partner has kept a club winner, a diamond, and ♠Hx or ♠AK. Partner has ♦8 or ♦J, because with AQJ8 opposite 9xx declarer would have taken a second diamond finesse earlier.

If declarer has ♦AQJx I should throw a spade, regardless of the spade position.
If declarer has ♦AQ8x and ♠K, I should throw a diamond, to stop declarer getting another spade trick.
If declarer has ♦AQ8x and ♠A, it doesn't matter what I do.

If all layouts were equally likely, I'd throw a spade. However, there are three pointers in the other direction:
- When following to hearts and clubs, partner played his lowest card at every opportunity. I think that's suit preference, showing something in diamonds.
- Partner encouraged spades. I think he should only do that with the ace - I already know he has a spade honour, and he knows I know.
- A AKJxx AQ8x KQx is probably a 2♣ opener, and A AKJxx AQJx KQx certainly is.

Hence I throw a diamond.

These signals are getting a little complicated as there are three suits are involved. First he played low on the first ♥ to say he liked ♣ (or that he didn't like anything better than ♣). If he had the ♠A, should he have echoed in ♥ to suggest interest in another suit (♠, obvious to both defenders) ? I trust partner's first Smith signal and the low ♠. Not quite so sure if the remaining ones were also thoughtfully played by partner to convey suit preference. It's almost as if there're 8 combinations, like/dislike ♣, have/not have ♠A, have/not have ♦J. This is beginning to resemble vector generation used in Chip Verification ...

I liked the answer that didn't rely so much on signals. Most declarers tend to take the 2nd finesse with AQJx. If your declarer played the way he did when he did have AQJx, he probably did better than his counterparts. Or may be he played it the way he did because there was no other way to play it.