[lamford]

Cyberyeti, on 2017-July-24, 17:15, said:

I'm not sure what line you're comparing this with in the "How do you gain" remark.

My worry is Qx, KQxxxx, xxxx, x for the finessing lines which I think is much more likely than the 6-5.

If you second diamond in hand and play a club to the nine and cash two more clubs, you can still elect to play a spade to the ace if you think that Qx is more likely than a small singleton. If East had four small spades, he might have switched to a spade, as well. But, as I said, the big disadvantage in crossing to the king of spades is that you give too much away about your hand. You haven't given a line where you gain by winning the second trick with the king of diamonds.

[lamford]

PhilG007, on 2017-July-25, 02:02, said:

A very lucky lie of the cards

Indeed the contract, needing hearts blocked and the ace of diamonds with the shorter hearts, is less than 5%.

[Cyberyeti]

lamford, on 2017-July-25, 08:36, said:

If you second diamond in hand and play a club to the nine and cash two more clubs, you can still elect to play a spade to the ace if you think that Qx is more likely than a small singleton. If East had four small spades, he might have switched to a spade, as well. But, as I said, the big disadvantage in crossing to the king of spades is that you give too much away about your hand. You haven't given a line where you gain by winning the second trick with the king of diamonds.

The line where you gain is exactly the one you pointed out earlier. You lose the flexibility to play spades from the top if you've released the ♦J prematurely because you go off on the xx, KQxxxx, xxxx, x case as you can't lead diamonds from hand if you've discarded ♦K, but if you haven't, E wins the spade and exits a small diamond where you can't get back to hand in time.

I'd rather make on all the 4-2s and stiff Q and go off to a small singleton than make on the hands where W has 2 small black singletons, but go off where he has Q/Qx (or xx if you play spades from the top).

[miamijd]

Cyberyeti's line fails on the actual lie of the cards, but I agree that

Qx KQxxxx xxxx x

is more likely than

x KQxxxx xxxxx x

for any number of reasons, the most obvious being that hand 2 is a pretty good conventional call (Capp, DONT, Woolsey, whatever you play) NV over 1NT.

[lamford]

miamijd, on 2017-July-25, 16:45, said:

Cyberyeti's line fails on the actual lie of the cards, but I agree that

Qx KQxxxx xxxx x

is more likely than

x KQxxxx xxxxx x

for any number of reasons, the most obvious being that hand 2 is a pretty good conventional call (Capp, DONT, Woolsey, whatever you play) NV over 1NT.

No, both Cyber's and my line succeed on the actual lie of the cards with East having Qxxx A Axxx Jxxx. I still think the main advantage of winning the second diamond in hand and finessing the club is that East knows less about the hand than if you win with the ♦ K (he knows you have QJx) and cross to the ace or king of spades (that looks like AK). I agree that I can no longer play spades from the top if I win the first diamond in South, so I will lose to Q or Qx with West, but gain on Qxxxx with East. And I would bid on both possible hands over 1NT.