[Trumpace]

West is on lead and has just lead the ♥A

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You need three of the last five tricks to make your contract. Clubs are trump and everyone is out of spades and opponents are out of trumps.

West is on lead and leads the ♥A.

What is your plan for 3 tricks? Assume that if you need to make some guess based on the bidding, you can do it.

[goobers]

?

Is this the final heart lead?

Assuming it is, you can induce the opponents to break diamonds (do not ruff the heart), which allows you to pick up a trick you can't get otherwise if LHO has the Q but not the ace.

If not, I don't really know what to do other than lead up to DK and cross your fingers.

[Trumpace]

To clarify this was the whole deal

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You are in 4♣. You receive the spade Jack lead. You rise with the Ace. Draw two rounds of trump ending in dummy (noticing a 3-1 break, 3 trumps with RHO). Play a spade to 9, cash the spade K (spades are 3-3), trump to dummy, discard a heart on spade Ten. Exit heart. West wins and leads the Heart A.

[Trumpace]

goobers, on Jun 26 2007, 01:15 PM, said:

?

Is this the final heart lead?

Assuming it is, you can induce the opponents to break diamonds (do not ruff the heart), which allows you to pick up a trick you can't get otherwise if LHO has the Q but not the ace.

If not, I don't really know what to do other than lead up to DK and cross your fingers.

Well, if you duck and opponents lead a heart, you can always ruff in dummy while discarding from hand, making the three trumps separately. So do you still need to know if it is the last heart or not?

[goobers]

Oh I failed to see the extra trump in dummy. Don't ask me how you play 5 cards opposite 4.

[skjaeran]

Seeing LHO have lead from ♠Jxx, holding (it looks like) ♥AQ?? and a singleton ♣, it seems obvious to me that he's got the ♦A (unless that's impossible according to the bidding). Most people would prefer a ♦ lead from the Q or T over a ♠ from Jxx.

So I'll play west for the ♦A.

[Trumpace]

The opponents' play wasn't too reliable.

In fact from the bidding it looked like RHO had the ♦A (in fact he did!), but assume that you do not have that information.

Trying to come up with the correct guess is not the point of this problem. In fact, I did not even want to show the full hand: to avoid people making inferences like these.

The point of the post is: how will you maximize your chances of making 3 tricks. If you are forced to guess, then so be it, and assume that you guess correctly (like A with LHO or with RHO etc).

So basically ignore the full hand shown and look at the end game position given.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

ruff and play a small diamond, whatever West
plays duck, trying to endplay East, if West plays
high winning the trick and plays another diamonds,
I would raise with the King, unless the bidding
tells me differently.

Not ruffing the Ace of hearts is no good, eventually
you have to guess in diamonds, one way or another.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[whereagles]

Why can't you give us instead

♥ 8
♦ Kx

♦ Jx
♣ J

Now you lead the ♣J to catch LHO in a vice squeeze on the reds

[Trumpace]

P_Marlowe, on Jun 26 2007, 04:54 PM, said:

Hi,

ruff and play a small diamond, whatever West
plays duck, trying to endplay East, if West plays
high winning the trick and plays another diamonds,
I would raise with the King, unless the bidding
tells me differently.

Not ruffing the Ace of hearts is no good, eventually
you have to guess in diamonds, one way or another.

With kind regards
Marlowe

Yes!

I think this is the right play too...

It sort of goes against what we have learned, to play a diamond ourselves... It is so ingrained that (B/I) people might not even consider leading a dimaond. I think this is an instructive end game position for the B/I folks here...

Against intermediate players, i think the best play is to ruff, and then lead the diamond 7. This works with a sleeping west (who does not cover the 7), or if west has no card > 7, or east has AQT exact (and west covers). If West covers the 7 with anything other than Q, duck in dummy, don't play the K. If west plays the Q, cover with the K.

If west wins and now leads a diamond, make the guess which you always had to make if you ducked the heart A.

You try to avoid making a guess unless forced to. Ducking the heart A, forces you to do that immediately.