[dkham]

Full disclosure - I'm preparing this for a Bridge article elsewhere and want to expose it to some experts first! It's an interesting problem though and I think makes for a good challenge.

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The question is, what should West lead (knowing all four hands) against South's contract of 6♦?

(If you want to play around with the hand, you can use this utility http://dh2119.webatu...testPlayer.html and click Deal Number 5)

[PhilKing]

♥J. Don't think it beats it, though. There's a sort of black suit double squeeze by delaying the Fork in spades. The six-card ending is:

.............2
.............-
.............K7
.............654
....J54.............A98
....-...............-
....-...............-
....KT9.............J32
.............KQT
.............-
.............-
.............AQ8

On the penultimate trump East discards a club, declarer a club and we are cooked.

[ahydra]

Declarer has two possible losers (spade and club - the other club goes on a spade), but can't he always succeed simply by playing a spade towards hand? If E grabs his ace, declarer has a second club discard; if not, declarer doesn't lose a spade.

ahydra

[PhilKing]

ahydra, on 2013-January-23, 10:07, said:

Declarer has two possible losers (spade and club - the other club goes on a spade), but can't he always succeed simply by playing a spade towards hand? If E grabs his ace, declarer has a second club discard; if not, declarer doesn't lose a spade.

ahydra

That was the play OP envisaged, but East beats the contract by ducking since declarer loses two clubs instead.

[Cyberyeti]

J♥ is clearly the best lead as anything else loses instantly, but PhilKing is right, declarer can get home.

Does small spade from East beat this at trick one if played the other way up ? I think so.(Edit: but a club is obviously more prosaic)

[JLOGIC]

PhilKing, on 2013-January-23, 10:02, said:

♥J. Don't think it beats it, though. There's a sort of black suit double squeeze by delaying the Fork in spades. The six-card ending is:

.............2
.............-
.............K7
.............654
....J54.............A98
....-...............-
....-...............-
....KT9.............J32
.............KQT
.............-
.............-
.............AQ8

On the penultimate trump East discards a club, declarer a club and we are cooked.

prettayyyyy strong

[dkham]

Can you talk me through that double-squeeze a bit more?
On the penultimate trump East discards a club, declarer a club, and East must discard a club too (else we can setup two Spade tricks). What do we do now?

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[Cyberyeti]

Play the spade.

If E wins, you pitch 2 clubs on the KQ, if he ducks, play ♣A and another and N's 3rd x♣ scores.

[PhilKing]

It's still a good hand.

[dkham]

OK got it, thanks for the excellent analysis