[NoEmotions]

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Team match, lead is the ♥6 (attitude). Your plan?

[WesleyC]

Tricky hand - you've got a lot to do and awkward communications. It feels like against accurate defense, you're probably always going to need the club Ace onside.

My first instinct was to win the opening lead in hand and play spades from top, overtaking in dummy. One advantage of this line is that if West wins the spade, it will be very hard for them to switch away from the ♣A.

The other reasonable option is a diamond towards the Queen. This might be more flexible (and would be perfect if you can steal a diamond trick) but against reasonable defenders it telegraphs the club weakness a little too much. East will usually win and then should find the club switch if its right. This line also entails an extra risk that you might might go down if diamonds are very unfavourable, even with the ♣A onside.

[rhm]

WesleyC, on 2015-October-11, 23:39, said:

Tricky hand - you've got a lot to do and awkward communications. It feels like against accurate defense, you're probably always going to need the club Ace onside.

My first instinct was to win the opening lead in hand and play spades from top, overtaking in dummy. One advantage of this line is that if West wins the spade, it will be very hard for them to switch away from the ♣A.

The other reasonable option is a diamond towards the Queen. This might be more flexible (and would be perfect if you can steal a diamond trick) but against reasonable defenders it telegraphs the club weakness a little too much. East will usually win and then should find the club switch if its right. This line also entails an extra risk that you might might go down if diamonds are very unfavourable, even with the ♣A onside.

Playing on diamonds first is probably superior.
All lines seem to require that the club ace is onside. If the club ace is wrong the defense need not switch to clubs early.

If you establish and cash the spades early, say on a heart continuation, since you have only a sure entry to dummy in hearts, you go down if spades do not break even when the club ace is onside.

Win the heart in hand and play a diamond up. Whatever the defense does next switch to spades, overtaking the ten in dummy.
Later establish a diamond trick, which acts as an entry to the spades.
If you establish three cashable diamond tricks in the process for the defense before you have 9 tricks too bad, but this looks less likely than spades not breaking.

Rainer Herrmann

[WesleyC]

Good points by rhm. On more reflection, starting with diamonds might also be superior if you run into a very favourable diamond layout like: West:[xxx xxxxx KTx Ax] or West:[xxxx xxxx AK Axx]. In this case you might be able to establish 2 diamond tricks, and if the opponents do knock out the clubs, you can fall back on the spade finesse in desperation.

Also, the major loss case for starting with diamonds (RHO holding ♦AK and the ♣A) is unlikely because many players would open that hand in 2nd chair.

[NoEmotions]

Thank you for your answers!