[ArtK78]

The title of this Forum is "Interesting Bridge Hands," so I thought I would post this hand that I played in an ACBL BBO Robot game last night.

Matchpoints.

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East led his two top hearts and shifted to the club 3, won with the 9 (an error, but I overcame it). It certainly seemed unlikely that East had the ♦K, and it also seemed likely that West had some diamond length. It took me a few moments, but I worked out that I could bring in the diamond suit for one loser if East had Tx or Jx (or JT doubleton, but that is less likely than Jx or Tx together).

So, I crossed to the ♠A and led the ♦9 and ran it to the J - an Intra Finesse! I won the club return in dummy (fortunately it was not ruffed) and led the ♦Q - K - A - T. Success!!

There are other layouts to bring in the diamond suit for only one loser (for example, a singleton diamond J or 10 in the East hand), but this one was fun.

[gszes]

nice indeed-- I am still searching for your error though-- if it was winning the club in hand
that was irrelevant to the intra finesse play since you needed rho to hold at least 2 clubs
no matter what and since rho didn't return a spade it is hugely unlikely they had a singleton
spade. My eyes are getting tired looking for what you did wrong pleas enlighten:))))) well done

[ArtK78]

gszes, on 2013-October-16, 17:49, said:

nice indeed-- I am still searching for your error though-- if it was winning the club in hand
that was irrelevant to the intra finesse play since you needed rho to hold at least 2 clubs
no matter what and since rho didn't return a spade it is hugely unlikely they had a singleton
spade. My eyes are getting tired looking for what you did wrong pleas enlighten:))))) well done

Since I had to lead the diamond towards the Qxx I should have won trick 3 in the long diamond hand. I made it slightly more likely that there could be an opposing ruff by crossing in spades.