[inquiry]

You stumble into 7♠ when partner gets overly excited. There is good news and bad news in spades. The first three tricks are as shown by clicking the NEXT button. Plan your play.

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[billw55]

Easy one, once I learned this tactic.

Spoiler

Just a little extra care required in the round suits.

♣5 to 9, ♦ ruff, ♣T to J, ♦ ruff. Now go to dummy with a small heart (not cashing the Q) and run winners until east ruffs, leaving the ♥J7 for last. Works when clubs and hearts break 4-2 or better; if either suit is 5-1 I'll go down when east ruffs one of my entries to dummy.

Edit: lol, forgot I was on the board to start with. Same principle, ruff two diamonds, and make sure I keep higher clubs in dummy than in my hand.

[kenberg]

On the board at T3, the position is a known one, the question is what is needed. If E holds 2+ cards in every side suit I'm ok, or 1 diamond and at least three clubs and two hearts.

Spoiler

At 1-3 are played: Heart to A, QJ of spades, I am on the board.
T4. ruff mall diamond
T5 : [He} Q I think this is necessary
T6. ♣Q to A
T7. ruff small diamond
T8. ♣5 to 9
T9. Top diamond If he ruffs I overruff, draw the last trump return to the good board via the T to the J. If he does not ruff. I toss the ♣K. Assume no ruff.
T10.. Top diamond If he ruffs, I overruff and return to the good board in clubs. If he does not ruff, I toss my last heart. Assume no ruff.
T11. [He]K . If he ruffs, I overruff , if not I toss my last club. .
T12. lead from board, he must play one of his spades.

If I neglect to cash the heart Q early on I think he can hurt me after I return to boar d with the second club. It is dangerous to cash a third club, he might ruff. If I play immediately on diamonds, he will toss a club if he has one and then I definitely cannot play a third club. I can toss clubs on the AK of diamonds and then play a club, but he still doesn't ruff, he tosses a heart. Then I may be stuck. So at least on some layouts, I think cashing the ]He] Q is necessary.

Perhaps I can get by with a worse distribution on my right, but this is how I play it. .

[sfi]

You can do slightly better.

Spoiler

The hand is cold as long as RHO has to follow twice when you try and reach dummy in clubs. Simply ruff a diamond, cross with a club, ruff another diamond, and enter lead another club to dummy. Now cash your two diamonds pitching both cards in either hearts or clubs (it doesn't matter which one). Then cash your two good tricks in the suit you are now void in, with the intention of pitching your cards in the other suit. If RHO ruffs in at any point, overruff, draw trump and claim. If not, lead a card off dummy at trick 12 to complete the trump coup.

As long as you can get to dummy twice in clubs you're fine. Crossing in hearts won't work because you don't wind up with enough good cards in dummy to pitch all your clubs - RHO can just keep pitching and force you to either lead a club for them to ruff or to trump a loser, thereby setting up a trick for the defence.

You also need to discard the same suit twice on the diamonds. Otherwise you might wind up presenting RHO with a chance to ruff one of your winners.

[kenberg]

sfi, on 2014-May-22, 05:29, said:

You can do slightly better.

Spoiler

The hand is cold as long as RHO has to follow twice when you try and reach dummy in clubs. Simply ruff a diamond, cross with a club, ruff another diamond, and enter lead another club to dummy. Now cash your two diamonds pitching both cards in either hearts or clubs (it doesn't matter which one). Then cash your two good tricks in the suit you are now void in, with the intention of pitching your cards in the other suit. If RHO ruffs in at any point, overruff, draw trump and claim. If not, lead a card off dummy at trick 12 to complete the trump coup.

As long as you can get to dummy twice in clubs you're fine. Crossing in hearts won't work because you don't wind up with enough good cards in dummy to pitch all your clubs - RHO can just keep pitching and force you to either lead a club for them to ruff or to trump a loser, thereby setting up a trick for the defence.

You also need to discard the same suit twice on the diamonds. Otherwise you might wind up presenting RHO with a chance to ruff one of your winners.

You are right I that I was wrong, but I think a little more care is needed than what you say.

Spoiler

Suppose after ruff-club-ruff-club you cash the top diamonds, E not rouffing, you throwing clubs. You now have three haertts in dummy, two in hand. You have one good club left on the board. You play it and toss a heart. Now what?

But tossing hearts does work I think. I was just being lazy. Since W is known to have five of something, maybe hearts, that slip could be serious.

[sfi]

Good point - I magically gave dummy a fourth club for some reason. Hmmph.

[kenberg]

A thought: A good question for us all for many of these lesson hands would be: What is the minimum you need to hope for, explain why you need it, explain why you do not need more.
Certainly I, and I doubt that others are exempt, have played hands in a way that might well work, but might not work because my line requires more than the best line needs. Onm this hand, if I ruff back to my hand and successfully cash the ♥ Q, quite possibly it would never occur to me that I just dodged an unnecessary bullet.

[Windboe]

Technically its clear: A trump shortening. S has to ruff 2!D, eliminate the side, reach a 2 card ending and play a side suit from dummy and the trumps of E are catched.
That is technically easy. In praxis E might come to the idea to ruff my side suits in which I try to reach the dummy. So I have the next question: what is the distribution of E? Can I read it?

In books E has 4-3-3-3, so no problem, but the real life is not so nice.
Although I cannot look trough the cards, there are 2 things, which can help me:
1. Its the tendency of the nature to flat everything, to find the middle of all.
That means, if W has only a single in !S, there is - after my observation - the nature, God or the universe - will give W exact one more card in the other suits.
That is not possible here, so the nature will find the next likely distribution, 1-4-5-3 or 1-3-5-4 with W; respectively 4-2-4-3 or 4-3-4-2 with E.
2. The first free discard of W might help. He discarded a !C and that means his !C are not shorter than his !H. He is more likely to have 5!C than 5!H.

So it seems right to start with
4. !D ruff
5.!C to the 9
6.!Druff
7.!H to the Jack
8.!D with !H discard
9.!D with !C discard
10.!H with !C discard
But woe to me, my last cards are 2 trumps and a high !C and dummy has two high !C but a !h loser and I might go down, if E originally had a single !C.
The right play seems to be
5. to cash the !hQ
6.!C to 9
7.!D ruff
8. !C to dummy to execute the rest like above.

This play will fail, if E has a singleton !C or a singleton !H. I could have made with a singleton !C and three hearts by E (or otherwise), reaching dummy with a third round in !h but a second !C, but I have no way seen to conclude this.

[kenberg]

Here is a way of looking at it quickly: After three tricks, E is known to have started with exactly four spades. W klet a heart and NS have 7, so E has at most five hearts. Therefore E has at least four cards in the minors. As long as two of them are clubs declarer can get back to dummy twice.Two diamonds and two clubs, E follows as declarer ruffs the low diamonds. ff E has one diamond then he also has at least three clubs. He can pitch a club as the second diamond is led from the board, but it doesn't help since he will still have at least one more club. Same if E has no diamonds since then he has at least four clubs.


So: Given what has happened through trick 3, we need two clubs with East. We need nothing more except careful sequencing.
My earlier thought of cashing the ♥ Q after the first ♦ ruff is an unnecessary risk.

[sfi]

Windboe, on 2014-May-22, 13:40, said:

The right play seems to be
5. to cash the !hQ
6.!C to 9
7.!D ruff
8. !C to dummy to execute the rest like above.

This play will fail, if E has a singleton !C or a singleton !H. I could have made with a singleton !C and three hearts by E (or otherwise), reaching dummy with a third round in !h but a second !C, but I have no way seen to conclude this.

You don't need to cash the HQ, so a singleton heart doesn't hurt you. And I don't think you can even make double-dummy if there is a singleton club unless hearts are 3-3.