[pescetom]

MP

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Your plan to make 6♠ North on a lead of ♣A?

[experts please use a spoiler at first]

[jillybean]

I am not even going attempt this. I can't do these problems on paper, I need to see the play.
I have to ruff the club, it looks like I will need to hook East in a red suit.

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2026-July-15, 08:57, said:

MP

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Your plan to make 6♠ South on a lead of ♣A?

[experts please use a spoiler at first]

I begin by barring the club lead. Sorry for not hiding that in a spoiler

[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2026-July-15, 09:32, said:

I am not even going attempt this. I can't do these problems on paper, I need to see the play.
I have to ruff the club, it looks like I will need to hook East in a red suit.

It’s often just a matter of practice. It can be very difficult, but it’s necessary in order to become a better declarer. Begin with small steps. Picture a line of play for the first two or three tricks…then mentally look at what your hand and dummy.looks like and whether you think you’re on the right path. As you get more used to this, you’ll hopefully be able to visualize further and further ahead. That’s how, for example, one can realize that a promising line may trap you in the wrong hand at an important juncture.

Don’t worry if there are hands where this seems impossible. I’m a pretty good declarer but there are some hands that are too difficult for me and still more hands where it’s impossible to visualize very far because one doesn’t have enough information about the opponents’s holdings. These hands are sometimes referred to as ‘scrambles’, where one is sort of feeling one’s way trick by trick, preferably rethinking everything one trick at a time until, with luck, you know enough to make reasonable projections. Find a book on declarer play problems and practice. It’s like any other skill…it seems impossible but diligence should show you that it isn’t truly impossible. Even getting just a bit better will help your declarer play a lot…and although defence is even harder, the same applies there.

[pescetom]

 mikeh, on 2026-July-15, 09:39, said:

I begin by barring the club lead. Sorry for not hiding that in a spoiler

Corrected, thanks.

[P_Marlowe]

jillybean, on 2026-July-15, 09:32, said:

I am not even going attempt this. I can't do these problems on paper, I need to see the play.
I have to ruff the club, it looks like I will need to hook East in a red suit.

I am not good either, but a recipe for trump contracts

#1 decide the main hand
- hand with the most trumps, this would be the North hand
- if the number of trumps is equal, take declarers hand

#2 Count the looser in the main hand
You have 0 in clubs, 3 in diamonds, 3 in hearts, 1-2 in spades => 7-8 loosers, you can afford 1
1 diamond looser is covered via Dummies King, another by having JT9 in the suit
this leaves 1 in diamond, ..., avoiding this diamond looser will be a finesse (one way or the other)
all 3 heart loosers are covered by Dummy, this leaves 0 in heart.
1 looser can be avoided with a finesse, the 2nd will show up with spades not breaking 3-2

If you take stock, you have 1 diamond looser (finesse), 1-2 spade loosers (finesse 1), this makes it
2-3 and you can only afford 1.

#3 Also you should make a habit of counting entries, as it is you have the heart suit that provides 3 entries
to dummy, and the trumps on the other side, i.e. entries are not an issue. (I usally blow this part.)

#4 The next decision is to decide, if you should draw trumps or not.
If you dont need trumps to get rid of loosers, you should draw trumps.
Our analysis mentioned finesse to avoid loosers, it did not use ruffs, in short you dont need trumps to avoid
loosers.
Now you should only make a finesse, if there is no better option, but the finesse is quite often the best solution,
last resort, ..., ob. timing matters.
For timing you can use the "EDF" rule for ordering (EVI in German)
E - <missing the english name> ("Expass")
D - Distribution ("Verteilung)
F - Finesse ("Impass")

#5 The next step is to decide, if the opponents thread to ruff our side winners, this involves analysing the lead.
Is the lead expected, e.g. they lead their fit suit (no ruff threaded) and or a side suit, e.g. a suit bid by us
... singleton probability raises.

Avoiding loosers in a single suit is now a problem, how to handle a specific suit, in our current scenario we have
a 6-2 fit. The 6-2 favours taking the finesse immediate, a 5-3 break favours cashing a top honor first.
If you deem the risk of enemy ruffs high enough, you may draw trumps from top.

[pescetom]

P_Marlowe's line would make here.

I actually find it hard to see how to go down, but several did, hence the post.
Quite possibly EW conceded less information in the auction.
I can imagine some of our intermediates blowing ♦K to take the spades finesse, but maybe there is more.

[pescetom]

Here is the full layout.

MP

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[WasWinM]

pescetom, on 2026-July-16, 09:50, said:

Here is the full layout.

MP

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Consider how much different the decisions are for declarer if RHO had the good sense to shut up instead of doubling.

[P_Marlowe]

pescetom, on 2026-July-16, 09:40, said:

P_Marlowe's line would make here.

I actually find it hard to see how to go down, but several did, hence the post.
Quite possibly EW conceded less information in the auction.
I can imagine some of our intermediates blowing ♦K to take the spades finesse, but maybe there is more.

I am not sure, I just tried to formulate a way how to get to a plan.
JB said she has issues formulating a plan, MikeH did (rightful) recommend getting a book,
le.g: I ike Bill Roots book "How to declare a Bridge Hand".
As it is you draw trumps, loosing 1 spade, but given they break 2-3 you only loose 1,
and now you need to finesse in diamonds.

The bidding favors East to hold the majority of points, due to this you decide to finesse
against East.

The decision who to finesse against is depend on the bidding and the distributional information
you gathered. Gathering / spotting the available information is quite often hard, although there
are simpler case, like the given hand, with a loud auction.

But the first steps are in the recipe. And you can than take it from there, and ask other, if you
you have overlooked certain things.

[P_Marlowe]

WasWinM, on 2026-July-16, 10:42, said:

Consider how much different the decisions are for declarer if RHO had the good sense to shut up instead of doubling.

Yes, I think than it is down to a guess, ..., unless I am overlooking something,
which is likely.
You could argue East showes up with AK in clubs, Q in spades, and he has 3 spades
and 4 hearts, ... I am not sure, if you can figure out, how many clubs East / West have,
this may mean, that you may go with a finesse against West.

[mike777]

Planning
East made take out double of one spade
Count out the shape and HCP placement

1.Give East 1444 shape
2.We have 25hcp, give East 12, give west 3
3.Give West 4 spades to the QS and JC
4.How do we play to make.
5.if we cannot then make up shape and Hcp placement where we can make it

===...======..=======
Advanced play level planning looks at ways to avoid taking a finesse such as

End plays
Dummy reversal
Trump coup
Simple basic squeeze
===============
Spingold level play, 2026

Declare leads K out of their hand knowing their expert opponents will Duck with their ace to prevent you from creating an entry to dummy.

Thus they fake out their opponents and steal a trick.....they never wanted to get to dummy

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2026-July-16, 09:50, said:

Here is the full layout.

MP

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Give me a break. East is an ***** but an ***** (in bridge terms) who’d pick up a big swing against me if I bid 6S. I doubt there’s a good player in the world who would bid 3C and not many more who’d double 1S. Bad bridge can work but showing us a hand where we have to read this situation teaches us nothing, other than that the world is full of terrible players. There’s a reason I much prefer playing against good players…. One can trust good players not to be insane

[mike777]

This is probably the famous
Kobayashi Maru test deal.

Fortunately for our side
Kirk is declarer.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2026-July-16, 12:30, said:

Give me a break. East is an ***** but an ***** (in bridge terms) who’d pick up a big swing against me if I bid 6S. I doubt there’s a good player in the world who would bid 3C and not many more who’d double 1S. Bad bridge can work but showing us a hand where we have to read this situation teaches us nothing, other than that the world is full of terrible players. There’s a reason I much prefer playing against good players…. One can trust good players not to be insane

I agree (see my previous comment with habituous understatement).
But FWIW the objective of the post was not to teach anyone anything, let alone about bidding, just me hoping to understand why some of the field (not stellar, but not that bad) went down in 6♠, something that might be useful to other I/A.

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2026-July-16, 14:32, said:

I agree (see my previous comment with habituous understatement).
But FWIW the objective of the post was not to teach anyone anything, let alone about bidding, just me hoping to understand why some of the field (not stellar, but not that bad) went down in 6♠, something that might be useful to other I/A.

If one is playing against competent players, EW probably aren’t in the auction. Note that south might (and in my partnerships we absolutely would) respond 2C. I doubt that many would get to slam but, if they did, the opening lead is presumably a club. Ruff, cash one top spade then over to dummy in hearts, lose the spade hook, ruff the club, pull trump and try to guess the diamonds. Declarer has very little shape info…basically he plays on hearts to get a count and everything he learns tells him that west has 4 cards in the majors to east’s 7. I’d go down.

The only lesson this hand presents is that it’s difficult to disabuse oneself of knowing the hand. When you assume EW never bids, tye hand is basically impossible to make on competent play.

Of course one would start diamonds by leading the 10 but nobody beyond beginner stage would even flinch (and if they did, I’d suspect them of trying to cheat me by pretending to have the queen, lol)