[pclayton]

Scoring: IMP

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I was kibitzing John Swanson and Jill Meyers yesterday and this interesting hand came up. Swanson and his partner stopped in 4N after a misevaluation by his partner. I've interchanged an 8 and a 9 to make the hand a little more interesting.

Jill led a small diamond and Randi Montin (Jill's pard) was squoze in the blacks for 13 tricks. 6♦ looks good, but 6N is considerably more safer, except on this hand, every key suit is not splitting and the A♥ is wrong.

Do you want to play or defend 6N (from the South side obviously)?

[Fluffy]

play!, 11 top tricks and seems 12th will come easylly with a strip-squeeze, althou not sure if I would find it at the table, it seems you soon discover West has 4 ♥ and East 3, wich means West is favourite for holding ♥A (also because the lead wasn't a ♥ with 4 cards having bid all the remaining suits probably).

[Trumpace]

What would the declarer do on a club lead? Seems like a club lead cuts the communication... (Maybe declarer can throw West in with a diamond?)

[cherdano]

Trumpace, on May 29 2005, 09:03 PM, said:

What would the declarer do on a club lead? Seems like a club lead cuts the communication... (Maybe declarer can throw West in with a diamond?)

Run the clubs, pitching a spade and two hearts from hand, then run the spades from hand. You come down to ♥K ♦AKQx in hand (with ♦Txxx left in dummy) and West is squeezed (exit with ♥K in case he keeps ♥A ♦Jxxx).

You don't need communication to execute a strip-squeeze.

Arend

[Trumpace]

cherdano, on May 29 2005, 03:08 PM, said:

Trumpace, on May 29 2005, 09:03 PM, said:

What would the declarer do on a club lead? Seems like a club lead cuts the communication... (Maybe declarer can throw West in with a diamond?)

Run the clubs, pitching a spade and two hearts from hand, then run the spades from hand. You come down to ♥K ♦AKQx in hand (with ♦Txxx left in dummy) and West is squeezed (exit with ♥K in case he keeps ♥A ♦Jxxx).

You don't need communication to execute a strip-squeeze.

Arend

Yes, I realised that after I posted... Also the statement about throwing West in with a diamond is totally silly! We would lose a diamond and a heart too!

I was thinking declarer would squeeze East rather than West, for that we need communication.

[pclayton]

Right - on a club lead, the strip squeeze operates against LHO in the reds, although its double dummy - as You have to bare the Spades and the KH.

A red suit lead gets you the 12th right away. On a spade lead, you curiously get to strip squeeze EITHER opponent as the J-8 of spades becomes a major tenace.