[gnasher]

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You lead a heart (OK, maybe you don't but pretend you did) to the 2, 10 and king. Declarer leads ♦Q, won by partner's king. Partner plays back ♥6 to declarer's ♥7 and dummy's queen.

Plan the defence.

[Edited to reduce number of ♥Qs.]

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-January-31, 03:23

[CSGibson]

gnasher, on 2012-January-30, 17:55, said:

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You lead a heart (OK, maybe you don't but pretend you did) to the 2, 10 and queen. Declarer leads ♦Q, won by partner's king. Partner plays back ♥6 to declarer's ♥7 and dummy's queen.

Plan the defence.

How many more Q of hearts should we expect on the hand?

[xcurt]

I'll pitch a spade now. Haven't worked out the details but I want to keep an extra diamond winner in case partner started with ♥JTx6. If declarer goes for the coup by riffing diamonds in hand, I can be in position to counter with a fifthh round.

[gnasher]

CSGibson, on 2012-January-30, 18:27, said:

How many more Q of hearts should we expect on the hand?

Sorry. I've corrected it now.

[rhm]

If declarer is trying a trump coup, partner will need the ♣J to beat this, so that declarer is short of entries to ruff 2♦s and take the ♣ finesse.
When declarer plays a ♣ from hand you must duck and if he then finesse against ♣J, win the second ♣ and return a third ♣.
Declarer could have ♠Ax, ♥AK9873, ♦Q, ♣Q98x

Rainer Herrmann

[phil_20686]

rhm, on 2012-January-31, 05:08, said:

If declarer is trying a trump coup, partner will need the ♣J to beat this, so that declarer is short of entries to ruff 2♦s and take the ♣ finesse.
When declarer plays a ♣ from hand you must duck and if he then finesse against ♣J, win the second ♣ and return a third ♣.
Declarer could have ♠Ax, ♥AK9873, ♦Q, ♣Q98x

Rainer Herrmann

The problem with this hand is that declarer has a much better line by playing a low spade up early. At least it feels like a much better line to me. If the spade K is onside the defence rapidly starts running out of suits to lead.

Maybe its not obviously a better line, but I would try it against most people. Besides, imagining declarer is envisaging you led your singleton trump is weird unless he 100% cold on a 3-2 heart break, and he obviously isn't, he could lose 1d 1s and 2 clubs.

I think its more likely he has two diamonds, and one spade. maybe A AK9xxx Qx Q9xx, then with 9xx he might conceivably get away both his club losers on diamonds if its AJx(x) with lho. In this case I am worried an early diamond discard could encourage him to try to hook the diamond 8 if I play low on the diamond. Now I dont think our two pointy suit tricks and our club trick will go away, but with partner holding Jxx in clubs I wont be able to stop declarer making this if he plays the clubs low to the K and then the ten is returned. If partner holds J8x or J9x he can cover the ten and he has two clubs to lose if he cannot get it away on a diamond. If this is the case declarer will next play a diamond from dummy I will win this with the ace and play a low club. If he rises with the K and plays a diamond partner will ruff when he has J9x clubs, and Txxx trumps, but obviously not if he had JTxx trump in which case we shall come to two diamonds one club and one heart. If partner ruffs this diamond, we must come to two clubs.

[gnasher]

What if declarer's clubs are QJxx?

[xcurt]

gnasher, on 2012-January-31, 15:49, said:

What if declarer's clubs are QJxx?

That's the hand I was thinking about (Ax, AK9xxx, Q, QJxx). It looks like the point is to ensure that we take both major suit tricks we have coming (or exchange one of them for a second diamond trick).

I don't think declarer can have A, AK9xxx, Qx, QJxx, since he would have cashed the SA at T2. If he has 1615 with the CQJ he's just cold and he can never execute the coup for the overtrick, with worse clubs he's just on a club guess.

But if declarer has Ax, AK9xxx, Q, QJxx he's going to play

T1. H to K
T2. D to K
T3. H to Q
T4. D ruff
T5. club up

then whenever he is in dummy he ruffs another diamond and plays clubs. If he does this, when we win the CA we need to play the DA tapping declarer down to fewer trumps than partner. In effect this strips declarer of his throw-in card.

Edit (to remove diseased imaginings left over from my first post) -- I guess we don't need the 5th diamond.

Edit -- if we take the first club and play the DA, then declarer can get his spade loser away on the 4th diamond. So we have to take specifically the second club.

Edit -- I should elaborate why we should take the second club and not the third. If we duck the second club (this assumes declarer's clubs are QJ8x or better) declarer will cash the top heart before playing another club. Now partner's hand is totally stripped, and he will eventually either take his trump and be forced to lead away from the SK, or he will wind up ruffing declarer's losing spade at T13.

[HighLow21]

Declarer showed a 14-17 point hand with at least 9 cards in the rounded suits. Dummy has 8 points and I have 9, so 23 are missing. Partner has shown up with the KD and nothing in trumps. He might have J10xx(x) in hearts in which case we may have a trump trick coming. The most partner can have in the black suits is 6 points.

We have 2 guaranteed winners: KD and AC. If declarer is 2-5-2-4, then the AD will stand up and all we need with partner is AS, or KS. If declarer is 3-5-1-4, then we need partner to hold AK in spades or a club winner. If declarer is 1-5-3-4, he is down on top tricks unless he holds AS AKJxxH QxxD QJxxC. But if this is the case and declarer doesn't hold this maximum, we must hold up our AD until the 3rd round. Otherwise a diamond winner can be used to pitch a club loser.

If declarer has 10 rounded suit cards, say 6 hearts missing the J and QJxx in clubs, then partner must have a spade trick and a trump trick for us to beat the contract. A trump coup could nullify his trump winner so it is vital we win one of the first 2 rounds of clubs to limit dummy entries.

If declarer has 5 hearts and 5 clubs, then we have 1 diamond, an almost certain trump trick, and 1 club (unless partner has Qx of clubs, very unlikely). We would need to take another diamond or the space ace.

[rhm]

gnasher, on 2012-January-31, 15:49, said:

What if declarer's clubs are QJxx?

I see what you are aiming at. If partner has 98x in ♣, the ♣7 becomes valuable, because declarer's ♣s are blocked.

Discard a ♠.
Declarer ruffs a ♦, goes to the ♣K and need not finesse the ♣s, but simply continues his trump reduction play by ruffing another ♦.
This is a necessary precondition for declarer to succeed.
Declarer should also realize when trumps do not break that East must hold the ♠K and West the ♠J for success against competent defense.
If, after the second ♦ ruff, declarer now plays a second low ♣ from hand, simply duck again and declarer is stuck in dummy.
If he ruffs a third ♦, he will get forced, your fifth ♦ being valuable, and he can not play ♠ himself without losing a trick in every suit.
What declarer must do after having ruffed ♦s twice, is to cash his remaining high trump, a very difficult and counter-intuitive play, which squeezes West in a strange way and declarer must by capable of reading the position. He is unlikely to get this right if you discard smoothly another low ♠.
If you discard a ♦, he can play a low ♣ to dummy.
If you duck, he ruffs the last ♦ and continues ♣s. If you win, you are end-played for the same result.
In both cases East will get eventually end-played with the last trump, if you return a minor to avoid opening up ♠s yourself.
If you discard a ♣, he can continue with a high ♣, ♣s being good except for the ace.
However, if you discard another ♠, he must play a low ♣ to the ten and play the ♠Q from dummy pinning the ♠J, a difficult (but not impossible) play to find.

Rainer Herrmann

[gnasher]

Ah. I thought this was a defensive problem, but I now see that it was a play problem.

Partner's clubs were indeed 98x. At the table, this hand discarded a diamond on the first round of trumps, then ducked the first two clubs, forcing declarer (me) to take an unwanted third diamond ruff in hand. When I now cashed ♥K and played a club, he didn't have a diamond to cash, so RHO had the choice of ruffing the last club and being endplayed, or allowing me to make a tenth trick.

This is a strange position: declarer is trying to reduce his trumps, but the way to beat him is to give him one more entry to dummy than he wants, and you have to envisage it early enough to keep the fifth diamond.

Rainer's squeeze is, of course, even stranger. I'd give it two upvotes if I could.

[xcurt]

Yes this is a beautiful hand.

I realized later last night declarer my defense doesn't work and I couldn't see how to beat the hand. I didn't look into it as deeply as Rainer (as usual) to see that West is getting squeezed once I thought the fifth diamond had no value.

[whereagles]

Oh no, the dreaded compass bug stoke again! I thought they had it fixed.