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The opening lead is the diamond Queen. WC opponents
2S was semi-constructive. We open virtually all 11 counts, so treating the north hand as a limit raise would be wildly optimistic.
At mps, in the typical game, you’d quickly assess this as a good contract, made even better by the lead.
You would think that you have three diamonds, and if the spade queen is onside, you could easily take 10 tricks. I’d expect many declarers to win in hand and lead a club. If the king wins, run any of dummy’s spades, ducking unless east plays the queen.
If the spade queen is onside, you may even be able to draw trump and set up the hearts, making the diamond hook irrelevant. Even if the club king loses to the ace, they probably can’t hurt you much. While 4-1 trumps and a club tap would be awkward, it’s pessimistic to cater to that at mps.
But at imps, it’s a much different story.
Play a club to dummy, losing to the king, and back comes a club. Win in dummy, run a spade, winning! Ok, play another spade and LHO wins the Queen as RHO shows out. Now he cashes the spade ace and leads a club, which you ruff. You may as well draw the last trump, but when you play a diamond to the 10, RHO wins and runs clubs. Ooops.
At the table, with Bobby Levin on your left and Steve Weinstein on your right, you shouldn’t assume anything would go well. In particular you don’t want to set up a tap nor do you want to create a possible heart ruff if hearts were 4-2.
So, not caring if you lose an unnecessary trump trick, you win the lead in hand and play a spade to the 9… it holds.
Well, it has to be right to play another spade…RHO shows out, pitching a diamond, as LHO wins the Queen. Back comes a small diamond.
You’re still ok….so long as you don’t finesse! The ‘marked’ finesse is now profoundly unsafe. If it loses, back comes a diamond, ruffed. Now you’ve lost a diamond, three trumps and the side aces. Going down in 2S when you thought you might make 4 would be embarrassing
So spurn the diamond finesse. The King holds and it’s time to play on hearts. Heart to the King, losing. Back a club. RHO taking the King with the Ace. RHO now cashes the diamond Jack….LHO pitching a heart…as you congratulate yourself on not hooking diamonds. Back comes another diamond.
If you pitch on this, to take a ruff in dummy, LHO can pitch as well. Now you’re in dummy….and LHO may be able to endplay you in dummy and score his small spade unless you guess his exact shape.
So ruff….you still have clubs stopped. LHO pitches a heart. You drive out the spade ace, and there’s nothing LHO can do, unless he was 4=2=2=5. He puts you in dummy with a club and you hold your breath as you play a heart to hand…winning. Now pull the last trump and claim.
LHO had AQxx Axxx Qx xxx.
The point is that at imps, the first question that one must ask, when declaring a seemingly sound contract, is ‘what could go wrong?’
Here, if everything is wrong, 2S can fail. On some layouts, there’s nothing you can do (I think that if LHO were AQxx Ax Qx Jxxxx you may be doomed, but I haven’t spent much time on it), but that doesn’t detract from the main point. Here, AQxx in spades offside and Qx diamonds, with the club Ace over the King, is the main danger, so assume that to be the case.
At the table I actually screwed up in the endgame, pitching from hand on the fourth diamond, which is a no-win play, but I survived. Of course we lost an imp since without that diamond lead, it’s easy to make 3 when LHO only has three clubs.