[han]

Scoring: IMP

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3NT declared from the south after a fairly unrevealing auction (1C-1S-2C-2D-3D-3NT). heart 4 is lead to the ace and the heart 10 is shot back. Your play?

[Echognome]

My plan is to cover with the J and hope they clear the suit. Then I can jettison my ♠A on the ♥ return and knockout the ♠Q. I am trying to take 5♠, 1♥, 2♦ and 1♣. I haven't thought through the rest, but I will definitely go down (when game was cold) when west has 5♥ and say Qx of ♠. Ouch!

[655321]

Echognome, on Mar 3 2008, 08:08 PM, said:

My plan is to cover with the J and hope they clear the suit.  Then I can jettison my ♠A on the ♥ return and knockout the ♠Q.  I am trying to take 5♠, 1♥, 2♦ and 1♣.  I haven't thought through the rest, but I will definitely go down (when game was cold) when west has 5♥ and say Qx of ♠.  Ouch!

Agree with this line.

[han]

If I told you that West was Hamman and East was not Hamman, would that change your line?

[mikeh]

We need some luck here.

We have options.

1. Play for the spade Q to be doubleton. In that case, nothing really matters.. we can't go down unless we do something really silly

2. Play for RHO to have 3 hearts and to keep them coming... we duck, win the next heart with the King and pitch the spade Ace. So long as hearts are 4-3 and the spade 8 comes down, we don't care where or how long the spade Queen is.

3. Play for RHO to have 2 hearts: ducking the heart is no good.. it protects that suit but RHO will have almost no choice but to play a diamond, which will be ugly unless the spade Q is stiff or doubleton. Win the King and ... oops, we need to drop the spade Q.

4. We know that LHO has the Q864(x) of hearts to start with, so we can play the J, knowing that LHO's heart spots are good enough for him to drive out your king. This is especially the case if he thinks that his partner would lead back the 10 from an original holding of A10xx (which he shouldn't). Now we pitch the spade A, and drive out the Queen, prevailing on all 4-3 heart fits and all 5-2 where RHO holds the Q of spades

Since we can always fall back on the spade Q dropping stiff or doubleton if LHO switches at trick 3, and there is a grave risk of RHO having only 2 hearts, I vote for inserting the Jack.

Edit: one of the hazards of long posts, when you type as slowly as me, is that others post your line before you do

[pclayton]

Agree with Gnome.

[Echognome]

I think this would be a good BIL problem if the ♠A and K were reversed. Han - post it again in one month.

[Fluffy]

han, on Mar 4 2008, 01:13 AM, said:

If I told you that West was Hamman and East was not Hamman, would that change your line?

I don't know Hamman, but if you think he is good enough then ducking ♥10 might be better I guess. But given that our hand is completelly unrevealed figuring this out looks like a Rexford's tale.

[Winstonm]

Echognome, on Mar 3 2008, 08:08 PM, said:

My plan is to cover with the J and hope they clear the suit. Then I can jettison my ♠A on the ♥ return and knockout the ♠Q. I am trying to take 5♠, 1♥, 2♦ and 1♣. I haven't thought through the rest, but I will definitely go down (when game was cold) when west has 5♥ and say Qx of ♠. Ouch!

ditto

[cherdano]

If you play for the jettison, I think ducking is better than covering. If you cover, LHO knows you have the king left and might well work out not to return a heart. It is much harder for RHO you would look quite silly if he shifts and we have ♥Qxxx.

[pclayton]

cherdano, on Mar 4 2008, 07:32 AM, said:

If you play for the jettison, I think ducking is better than covering. If you cover, LHO knows you have the king left and might well work out not to return a heart. It is much harder for RHO you would look quite silly if he shifts and we have ♥Qxxx.

I'd be shocked if anyone could work this out in real life.

[Echognome]

If we truly think that West will work out what to do if we insert the Jack, then why can't we assume West will overtake the T and switch to a diamond? I mean if we're going to be that pessimistic, we can go whole hog!

[mikeh]

cherdano, on Mar 4 2008, 10:32 AM, said:

If you play for the jettison, I think ducking is better than covering. If you cover, LHO knows you have the king left and might well work out not to return a heart. It is much harder for RHO you would look quite silly if he shifts and we have ♥Qxxx.

The real problem with ducking is that hearts may be 5=2, in which case you have endplayed RHO into setting you. Now that would be unlucky

So which is more likely: that hearts are 5-2, and ducking assures you of failure, or that hearts are 4-3 and that LHO, whose heart spots are known to be the 86 with the 1097 already gone, won't automatically clear the suit?

I play the J.

[han]

I think that your comparison is not quite correct Mike. If hearts are indeed 5-2 then the jettison only works when east has the spade queen. And if they switch then you will still make if the queen drops.

To Echognome, Arend's point is not one of pessimism. He thinks that east, who doesn't know the layout in the heart suit, is less likely to find the switch than west, who does know. Seems a valid point. (west can probably read that you played the jack from KJxx, and will wonder why you did that.)

Maybe Phil is right that Hamman (who was indeed sitting wesst) will never find the switch after you cover but I think he is wrong.

The actual declarer played the king btw.