[fred]

Scoring: IMP

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I opened 1D (Precision), West overcalled 2S (weak), my partner (Geoff Hampson) made a negative double and raised my 2NT rebid to 3NT.

West led the King of spades.

How would you play this ambitious contract? Don't expect any miracles in the club suit.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Fluffy]

Only chance I can see to make is ♥Q droping, combined with a ♣ honnor on West's hands, ,and also ♦3-4 divided.
Just enter your hand with ♥ then run ♣9, reenter your hand with a ♥ and play more ♣, East may duck ♣ but then he will only have ♥ and ♦ left to play, IF he tries ♦A you have to unblock ♦K to endplay him with 4th♦ so he has to play into ♥J9.

on the ♦A you should also discard ♦8 from hand, so that East cannot unnblock his top ♦ to avoid the gambit.

The ending position.

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[pdmunro]

Ok Fred the following may not be what happened. And I commited the mortal sin of using Deep Finesse. But it was fun.

Using Deep Finesse and following Fluffy's suggestions, I gave West

♠KQxxx
♥Qx
♦xxx
♣Jx.

The play of the hand is characterised by high card leads that drop West's honours. Three times the opponents are put on lead. I have called them all endplays. But the first two are not real endplays, the opps have an escape card, so I wrote them as "endplays". Finally comes the real endplay, from which there is no escape.

Declarer takes the ♠A on the first trick. No need to hold up, E has only one spade.
Play the ♥AK to drop the Q.
Take a finesse in ♣'s. East ducks.
Now bravely play the ♣K from the table to "endplay" E, and watch W's ♣ honour drop.

East tries the ♦A and a small ♦. Win in dummy with the ♦K. Now "endplay" W in ♠'s.

He escapes in ♦.
Declarer take his ♠J winner, his ♦Q winner, and endplays E with a ♣.
Now this is a real endplay. East has to play his ♥x to dummy's ♥J.

Of course, E could have discarded his ♣ to avoid the endplay. But then declarer's ♣ is a winner.
East preferred to suffer an honorable endplay rather than an ignominious squeeze.

[pclayton]

1st off - NEVER use DF and post the hand right off the bat . I have purposely not looked at the other post. If you want to use DF to settle an argument, after a hand has been posted for a week or longer, go ahead.

I've spent a good amount of bandwith over the last 12 hours on this beast. Here's my output:

You can't make this hand against AQx (AJx) or 4th with RHO. Why? Upon winning the middle club, RHO simply exits a small diamond, regardless of his holding. Upon holding up the club ace, you will never see dummy again. Even if you are able to fenagle an endplay againt righty, and build an entry with the heart J, you are still losing 2 clubs, 2 diamonds and the Q♥. If you never see dummy, the best you can develop is 2 spades (on an endplay), 2 hearts, 3 diamonds (through East avoiding the throw in) and a club.

So I see two possibilities: 1) Play LHO for the A♣ (because of an impending guess in the club suit, I've rejected this line), 2) Play RHO for Ax or AQ/J dub. Trick 1 - win the A♠ (you are budgeting the loss of 2 clubs, a diamond and a heart, so you can't duck). Exit a SMALL club at T2. Say RHO wins a middle honor and plays a heart; win and play a club up. If West ducks, duck, East wins the Ace and plays a heart again. Win and play a diamond to the K; East must duck, lest you get 1♠+ 2♥+ 2♦+ 4♣'s. Exit small diamond off the board. Now East is in and can cash the ♥Q, but then has to give up.

I'm probably missing something as usual and I'll be curious to see what really happened.

[fred]

I don't know what the "best" line of play is, but Fluffy had the general idea of what happened at the table (well done Fluffy!).

Here is RHO's actual hand. I will give you some more time to think about it and then describe how the play really went:

x
10xxxx
A109x
AJx

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Rebound]

Well I am prolly totally mistaken, but I win the ♠A and play the K of ♦. If it wins, I lead them again, and then every time I am in hand I lead clubs. If it loses, win any return and again play on clubs. How's that?

[fred]

Here is how the play actually went. There are probably several lines of play that would have worked. As I said I have no idea if my play is "best", but it led to an rare and interesting position:

Trick 1: I won the Ace of spades
Trick 2: I led the King of diamonds. RHO thought this over for a while and ducked (a strange play, but he had no winning defense)
Trick 3: Another diamond, ducked to my Queen
Trick 4: 9 of clubs covered by the Queen, King, and won by RHO with the Ace
Trick 5: Heart return won by me
Trick 6: 7 of clubs led and ducked
Trick 7: Other high heart cashed (this turned out to be a key play). LHO followed with the Queen (he started with Qx)
Trick 8: Club exit to RHO

RHO had 3 hearts to the 10 and the A10 of diamonds left. Obviously a heart return would have been fatal so he tried to cash the Ace of diamonds with the intention of locking me in my hand by exiting with the 10 of diamonds next (I would then lose 2 tricks to LHO in spades and go down).

But I dropped my Jack of diamonds under the Ace so, when RHO led the 10 of diamonds, he unexpectedly won the trick! He now had to lead a heart and give dummy the rest (and yes, Jlall, I did throw a club and keep J9 of hearts at the end to rub it in! - nice to know I am not the only one out there with a sick sense of humor!).

My play on the 3rd round of diamonds is known as a "gambit" - not really complicated, but not something you see every day.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Patapon]

oh! very nice:)
I like this hand

[Rebound]

Wadda ya know, it looks like I had the right idea. I doubt I would find the play of the J under the ♦A tho. Mind you, it'll be easier to see it if it comes up now. Thanks Fred :-)