[hrothgar]

Here's an interesting little hand that cropped up in a team match.
I misplayed it (nothing particularly interesting about that) - however, David Greenwood pointed out that there is a very cute line available.

---

The bidding was a little convoluted.

West opened 3♦ and North passed. The bidding proceeded

(3♦) - P - (P) - 3N
(4♦) - 5♦ - (P) - 5♠
(P) - 6♣ - (P) - P
(X) - P - (P) - 6N
All pass

How are you playing it?

[cherdano]

Lead was ♣6, RHO following.

[mgoetze]

To be fair, I'll add that double of 6♣ was alerted as "Lightner". Also, I welcome comments on what to bid with my hand (I was sitting North).

[helene_t]

East probably gets squeezed when I play the clubs. Discard all three diamonds. If East does no keep a diamond, I will throw him in with spades and he will have only hearts left so he must play towards AJ.

[FrancesHinden]

If we believe the Lightner double then East has all 5 hearts.
We only have 10 top tricks, so we'd better assume that the spade finesse is right as well. We cash the king of hearts, then run clubs.

Say East is 5521.
On the first 5 clubs he discards 2 hearts, a spade and a diamond, while we discard a diamond and a heart.
On the last club:
- if he discards another diamond so do we, then we play four rounds of spades via the finesse endplaying him to give us a heart trick
- if he discards another spade, we take four spade tricks with the aid of the finesse

But now suppose he is 4522 or 4531. This is the position before the last club

x
AJxx
10
x

AKJx
x
KJ
-

East is down to a 4210 shape and West is 4030 (West had to hang on to all 4 spades to stop the squeeze described above).

I don't see what we can do here unless East started with the DQ.

[Free]

Finesse ♠, ♠AK (discarding 2 ♥s), and run all your ♣s discarding ♦s in your hand. Now you'll be able to endplay RHO in ♠ or cash ♥AK...