[rduran1216]

---

Imps

You lead a spade, which goes x 6 J A

declarer returns the spade 10, plan the defense.

[dave_w]

I don't lead a Spade at all. I lead a Diamond. Anyway, I suppose dropping the wrong card on the table at trick one hasn't worked out too badly. I'm going to win this trick obviously - and I'd love to know if partner follows suit.

If he does then I think we should switch to a count club card. Partner will know it's count if he's looking at the Ace, otherwise this contract looks hard to beat as declarer has 5 Clubs a Spade. We'll need partner to have AQJxx Heart and the Ace of Diamonds (not impossible) and for him to signal clearly what we should do when we win the next Spade.

[MrAce]

Declarer obviously have ♣A since he is working to get a ♠ trick next year instead of working on clubs, which makes his tricks 5♣+♠A and he would have made it anyway if he had another Ace. Unless they open weak NT with 5 card major pd holds at least 5♥ (probably just 5 due to his silence or 4 only but doesnt matter since we should play declarer for not holding another ace) If we need to defeat this we need to find pd with a hand like this i guess. Jx AQJx Axxx xxx or Jx Axxxx AKx xxx. Pd cant go wrong if we play K of ♥ and another, he may think we hold KQxx ♥ but then we would not encourage when he cashes ♦K.


I would play K of ♥ and another

[dkham]

I wouldn't have thought of it myself but I like the reasoning behind leading the King of Hearts.

Also, and I'm new to these forums so this might be a old issue, is it possible to put West and North in the right relative positions in the hand diagram?

[dave_w]

MrAce, on 2012-May-08, 01:08, said:

Declarer obviously have ♣A since he is working to get a ♠ trick next year instead of working on clubs, which makes his tricks 5♣+♠A and he would have made it anyway if he had another Ace. Unless they open weak NT with 5 card major pd holds at least 5♥ (probably just 5 due to his silence or 4 only but doesnt matter since we should play declarer for not holding another ace) If we need to defeat this we need to find pd with a hand like this i guess. Jx AQJx Axxx xxx or Jx Axxxx AKx xxx. Pd cant go wrong if we play K of ♥ and another, he may think we hold KQxx ♥ but then we would not encourage when he cashes ♦K.


I would play K of ♥ and another

Your play is wrong for two reasons:
Firstly, it's not obvious that declarer has the ♣A. If declarer has two small Clubs then why would he play on Clubs? There's no entry.
Secondly, if declarer does have the ♣A then there's no hurry to play the ♥K - we can do it ourselves after winning our second Spade trick.

The only thing that can be critical to switch to now is a Club to kill an entry to the long Spade when declarer has two Clubs without the Ace.

[inquiry]

win spade, lead a count club.... if partner shows out on the 2nd spade use my last spade honor to deny an entry to dummy by ducking the nine or flying high on a small spade from south.

[gszes]

assuming p follows to the 2nd spade---

rho 11-14 the same as partners

we need to find hands that will allow us to set
the contract and play for them to exist (at imps
anyway not as clear at mp since 1n might be
a very normal contract). It is not reasonable to
assume p has something as good as xx AQJxx Axx xxx
since they would balance with 2h (same situation if
they have long diamonds). We need p to have some
card combination similar to

xx Axxxx Axx Axx
xx Jxxxx AJxx AJx
xx AQxx Axxx Axx
xx xxxxx AKx AJx
xx QJxx Axxxx Ax
xx AQJx Axxx xxx
xx AQJx Txxxx Axx

note 7 examples of p hands that require different switches
to set and/or avoid disaster. The only way to tell is to
play a 3rd round of spades and let partner signal what
we need to do. Note that a dia seems safe for all of them
but it can be a disaster for hand 7 since p has to underlead
the AQJ of hearts to set the contract when they win the club A
and thats after you lead a low dia VERY hard to do.

[MrAce]

dave_w, on 2012-May-08, 06:28, said:

Your play is wrong for two reasons:
Firstly, it's not obvious that declarer has the ♣A. If declarer has two small Clubs then why would he play on Clubs? There's no entry.
Secondly, if declarer does have the ♣A then there's no hurry to play the ♥K - we can do it ourselves after winning our second Spade trick.

The only thing that can be critical to switch to now is a Club to kill an entry to the long Spade when declarer has two Clubs without the Ace.

You are correct, i was tired and actually exhausted when wrote this. Declarer can easily have something like

AT9
AQxx
Axxx
xx

or

AT9
AQxx
Kxxx
xx


Good solution Dave

[wanoff]

Unlikely to beat this if declarer can get the clubs going. So I'll play partner for Axx clubs and lead a club before the 8S is established.

[Phil]

This is a good problem and takes a little thought. I got it wrong when RD gave it to me last week.

[JLOGIC]

The main point is that in either of timos constructions (hands where we can beat it when declarer has the CA), there is no rush to switch immediately. Declarer still only has 6 tricks, and our tricks are just cashers. Hands where declarer has no CA are definitely the relevant hand types.