[Flameous]

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Sure, we missed the laydown 4♠ but at least we got more interesting board this way. Defense starts with 3 rounds of hearts, what's your plan?

[inquiry]

Flameous, on 2012-July-10, 12:40, said:

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Sure, we missed the laydown 4♠ but at least we got more interesting board this way. Defense starts with 3 rounds of hearts, what's your plan?

West pretty much has to have all the missing HCP, except possibly the !sJ. You have eight tricks, and west will be put under pressure when you run ♠'s. You are not guaranteed to make, but it seems that West will come under pressure. Since i won the third round of hearts, west started top heart honor and east gave count in here. It might help decide which line to play with insight to the heart split, but the line I am considering is to force West down to KQ tight in diamonds then duck a diamond to him while still having the ♣A.

[gnasher]

You can make if West has ♣10 as well as all the honour cards. Run the spades, keeping three diamonds and two clubs in dummy. West has to keep three diamonds and therefore only two clubs, so you duck a club and the 9 is a winner.

[MrAce]

When you first posted this i was probably the first one to read it, and i came with the solution of the above posters. I even started replying "is there any other plan than cashing our spades ?"

The reason i didnt reply is, i couldn't figure how the hack will i know if west started with 4 or 3 diamonds. Basically we have to figure out which shape he started with. assume he discarded 1♥+1♣+1♦

If we believe he originally held 4 diamonds + 4 hearts +3♣ +2♠ then now we can end play him by playing clubs. But if we believe he started with 3 diamonds and 4 clubs then now we have to play diamond and duck.

We know east has 4♥ + at least 4♣ and lets say he followed 2 spades, we will come down to figure whether he has 4-4 or 5-4 in clubs and hearts. Perhaps with 4-4 he would bid hearts when retreating from NT ? Eventhough thats a common strategy among a lot of players to run to 2 major rather than 2 minor due to fobia of penalty doubling 2 major, he has a very weak hand and i doubt that this is a good hint to rely on. He may as well be trying to find their best fit.

[Zelandakh]

MrAce, on 2012-July-12, 02:34, said:

When you first posted this i was probably the first one to read it

I thought I was the first to read it. But I did not think an answer to actually pay attention to which cards the opponents played (which apparently we did not even do to tricks 1-3) and then go away and learn how to bid was very helpful. It is obvious what we are going to do so why not present the problem at the key point with the actual cards played included? Or does the OP have an earlier alternative in mind?

[MrAce]

Zelandakh, on 2012-July-12, 02:44, said:

Or does the OP have an earlier alternative in mind?

Maybe, since the plan in my mind didnt seem to work % 100 of the time, i thought the same thing, maybe there was another line that i can not see at the point where problem was given to us, or maybe there was a logical way to figure which shape did E or W start with.

But i doubt it, what can we do ? Duck a club now or diamond to rectify count ? I thought about them briefly but i dont think they give any additional advantage, if not makes things worse. If there is something to it, it must be the spot he is talking about in the title. But i will not spend more time then i already did for this hand for the reasons you already said.

[gnasher]

In the layout that I suggested, there's no guess. After I've cashed the spades we each have five cards left. If West has discarded ♣10, I play a club to the jack; if he hasn't I know that he is down to only two diamonds.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-July-12, 03:13

[gnasher]

gnasher, on 2012-July-12, 01:38, said:

You can make if West has ♣10 as well as all the honour cards.

Sorry, that's not necessary. In the five-card ending, if West has come down to 3=2 in the minors, we just play ace and another club, then duck ♦K when he switches to it. So we do need to read the ending, but I wouldn't expect it to be hard - I expect East will be dilligently signalling his shape to his partner.

[Flameous]

This was actually a sort of mistake on my part. I didn't declare the hand but was dummy and after the hand there's a lot of talk about 4! card ending while it should be 5 card ending, which lead me to misanalyze the hand without knowing it fully. I didn't go through the effort of looking at the hand when I posted it. Basically now it's indeed just about guessing the distribution. (Which is actually easy as NT bid was made with a singleton spade, which I could have added if this was meant as intermediate play problem)

I'll see if I can come up with a hand to actually reflect the interesting ending I though there was where ♣9 would have represented the last trick.
(You actually get it if you make west start with 12 cards , E holds the ♣Q)