[Fluffy]

Scoring: IMP

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The contract is 6♥ after a middle ♠ lead, What do you think is the best line here?

calculating % is hard sine there are lead implications, but if we consider the bidding to ask for a ♠ lead no matter the holding, what do you think is the best line?

[FrancesHinden]

A nice simple line is:

Win the opening lead with the Ace.
DA, D ruff
Club to the 10
D ruff
AQ of hearts
Club to the Jack
Draw the last trump.
Cash the CA

Now, that line adds up to 13 tricks so we can afford to lose a trick en route.
For example, the club finesse can lose and we can still make 12 tricks (although we need a bit of help such as the 9 of clubs coming down & no ruff as we try and draw trumps).

An alternative simple line is

Win in hand.
Trump to dummy.
Take a diamond finesse.
Take a club finesse.

In due course, making if the CQ is onside or the DK is onside, and we don't have a trump loser.

Although this "take lots of finesses" line looks a bit simple, I wonder if it isn't the best line?

[han]

At first this hand made me dizzy (too many possibilities!) so I wrote it down and took my time thinking about it. The line I chose is the same as Frances's, except that I win the first trick with the King. If the club finesse loses and a spade is played back then this gives you a needed entry to your hand.

Notice that there is also a possibility of a black suit squeeze if the club hook loses.

[FrancesHinden]

Except the problem with taking the first trick with the SK is that you have no late entry to the CK.

[pclayton]

Well then how about ♠K, trump to dummy, club hook? And Frances, if the club loses, they can remove your spade entry anyway. I don't like the idea of tapping dummy early, as 4-1♥'s on my right become a big problem, when I can take a diamond hook and ruff only one diamond, and pick up ♥Jxxx - assuming I can navigate all the entries.

Perhaps the middle spade makes it more likely the ♣Q lies over the J.

[han]

Indeed, if the club hook wins you don't need the extra entry to dummy, and if the club hook loses the entry will be taken away from you before you can use it anyway.

I decided to more or less ignore the idea of having a trump loser on this hand. This may be too much of a simplification, but the problem is so hard that I knew I wouldn't be able to decide what the best line is anyway. I think that I would use the same approach at the table on this hand.

What happened at the table Fluffy, and how did you do in Rotterdam?

[Fluffy]

We were very weak team in Rotterdam, but it was really fun, unlike other junior championships were people are under country's gflag, there we played 7 board matches against young people, most playing for fun. We had a lot of it. We finished on last 10 places but were the onlyteamto score 25 against the winners hehe.


There are many lines wich work and some wich won't work as the cards lied, I tried ♦ finese and then find out who has ♠Q, so I could use that to find ♣Q when ♦K won the trick. That worked, but I am not very sure its the best line, it certainlyis the only one (appart from trrying ♠3-3) that gives you a chance when ♥ are 4-1. The problem is, you can only pick ♥ in one side, and you are kinda clueless of where it is.

[Fluffy]

I wanted to see some real % on the lines here, cos I am still wondering wich line is the best. I decided to go for the ♦ finese, and then after finding RHO with ♠Q I suposed west was a guy afraid of underleading Qs against slam, so I played him for ♣Q .

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