[Mbodell]

You are declaring 3nt at Matchpoints, all vulnerable, on the auction:

2C - (2S) - P
2nt - 3C
3nt

That is you opened strong 2 clubs, opponent bid 2S, partner passed which shows non-bust, you bid 2nt, partner bid puppet statesman, you bid 3nt. Lead is club J (3rd hand plays 2, playing udca).

Dummy
987 Q973 QT9752 -

Declared
AK5 AT5 AJ3 AK94

[WesleyC]

Pitch a spade, and win the ♣A.

♦A, ♦3 to the ♦T.

The case where your choice of diamond pips matters is when LHO holds ♦Kxx. If LHO held two diamonds including the 3♦ they would always play it on the first round so essentially you are playing the card you're hypothetically known to hold. When you play the ♦3, RHO's play of any small diamond becomes consistent with ♦Jx and LHO might be tempted to jump in with ♦K to win the trick and deny you a dummy entry - especially if they don't hold the ♥K. If the opponents were playing natural count and attitude then you could achieve the same ambiguity by playing ♦A and then ♦J.

If the ♦T wins in dummy then I'll reassess based on who has shown out.

[gszes]

hard to be too specific but it seems best to duck the first club. Lho did not lead a club and yet begin with QJTxx(xx) spades. Rho has at least 1 spade honor. Lho is highly unlikely to switch to spades after their p gives them a positive signal. We need the opps help if we are to score 3 club tricks so ducking the first and wining the second with the A makes it appear to rho that lho began with KJT(xx) of clubs and makes it appear to lho that rho began with KQ(xxx) of clubs. Losing 1 club now cannot hurt so why not. Assuming we win trick 2 with the club ace.

Trick 3 I would exit with the dia J from hand. I realize this could lose to the stiff K but if it does at least we know we make our contract as we get 2s 5d 3c 1h if the deceived opps continue clubs so we make up for the overtrick we lose by not plopping down the dia ace. The main advantage of the dia J is that it forces Kxx to duck a diamond and tempts Kx to duck as well (getting us a very undeserved? overtrick). We can score 2 dia tricks this way to go along with 3c and 2s and we can try for our 9th trick by leading toward the heart Q. We can do all of this w/o giving up on bringing in the dia suit for at least 5 tricks.

[Mbodell]

WesleyC, on 2016-March-16, 07:00, said:

Pitch a spade, and win the ♣A.

♦A, ♦3 to the ♦T.

The case where your choice of diamond pips matters is when LHO holds ♦Kxx. If LHO held two diamonds including the 3♦ they would always play it on the first round so essentially you are playing the card you're hypothetically known to hold. When you play the ♦3, RHO's play of any small diamond becomes consistent with ♦Jx and LHO might be tempted to jump in with ♦K to win the trick and deny you a dummy entry - especially if they don't hold the ♥K. If the opponents were playing natural count and attitude then you could achieve the same ambiguity by playing ♦A and then ♦J.

If the ♦T wins in dummy then I'll reassess based on who has shown out.

Lho pitches a middle spade on the first round of diamonds. If you clear diamonds rho wins third round and leads club Q (and will continue clubs if you duck the Q, lho pitches another spade and a club on the diamonds).

[Caitlynne]

I win the opening lead with the KING and then play a small diamond toward the 10. If this wins, I revert to hearts, playing the Queen from dummy.

[Mbodell]

Looks like not much response. This was from the mixed pairs day one and it was gone wrong at both my table and a friend's table. The key to the hand is duck at least one round of clubs (either immediately or after they get in with the diamond k), try for goodness in diamonds, when that fails, play on hearts either A then T towards Q or immediately T towards Q. The overcaller's hand is QTxxxx J - JT8xxx so if you wrongly, as my opponent did, start hearts with low to the Q, when the Q loses to the K you have no entry, but if you had started with T to the Q the 9 would be an entry. I think my friend who got it wrong, on a slightly different auction was convinced that the overcaller needed the K to come in so the finesse would win, but not so on this one.

[nige1]

Mbodell, on 2016-March-16, 05:48, said:

You are declaring 3nt at Matchpoints, all vulnerable, on the auction:
2C - (2S) - P
2nt - 3C
3nt
That is you opened strong 2 clubs, opponent bid 2S, partner passed which shows non-bust, you bid 2nt, partner bid puppet statesman, you bid 3nt. Lead is club J (3rd hand plays 2, playing udca).
Dummy 987 Q973 QT9752 -
Declarer AK5 AT5 AJ3 AK94

Mbodell, on 2016-March-19, 20:10, said:

Looks like not much response. This was from the mixed pairs day one and it was gone wrong at both my table and a friend's table. The key to the hand is duck at least one round of clubs (either immediately or after they get in with the diamond k), try for goodness in diamonds, when that fails, play on hearts either A then T towards Q or immediately T towards Q. The overcaller's hand is QTxxxx J - JT8xxx so if you wrongly, as my opponent did, start hearts with low to the Q, when the Q loses to the K you have no entry, but if you had started with T to the Q the 9 would be an entry. I think my friend who got it wrong, on a slightly different auction was convinced that the overcaller needed the K to come in so the finesse would win, but not so on this one.

You can try overtaking ♦J with ♦Q. Unless LHO hesitates, if ♦Q wins and RHO follows to the next ♦, then you can take the ♦ finesse . This slightly improves your chances against most defenders , especially if RHO stated with ♦Kxx. Because 2 ♠ s, 2+ ♥ s + 3+ ♦s + 2 ♣s = at least 9 tricks and defenders don't have time to set up black tricks.