[broze]

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This hand was played at MPs at the club, but your goal here is to defeat the contract. Click through to see the first two tricks. Plan the defence.

[Cyberyeti]

I don't really understand partner's return of the 4♦, which card does he normally return ? 4th, 5th ? He really should have 6 here, what is he trying to tell me ?

If partner had cashing hearts, I'm not sure he would return the diamond without cashing one, so I think declarer has at least one heart trick.

I can't see a holding consistent with the auction where declarer has a stiff K of spades, but that seems the best chance particularly if I can trust 4♦ as 4th highest, play partner for 3352 and prevent declarer from enjoying A♠ by returning a club (playing declarer for K, Kxx, Qx, QJ109xxx or similar although this doesn't really give partner a 3♦ bid).

[broze]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-August-30, 12:43, said:

I don't really understand partner's return of the 4♦, which card does he normally return ? 4th, 5th ? He really should have 6 here, what is he trying to tell me ?

If partner had cashing hearts, I'm not sure he would return the diamond without cashing one, so I think declarer has at least one heart trick.

I can't see a holding consistent with the auction where declarer has a stiff K of spades, but that seems the best chance particularly if I can trust 4♦ as 4th highest, play partner for 3352 and prevent declarer from enjoying A♠ by returning a club (playing declarer for K, Kxx, Qx, QJ109xxx or similar although this doesn't really give partner a 3♦ bid).

Darn, that is my fault. Must have misclicked when creating the diagram. Partner actually returned the ♦8. You play 4th best.

I'll change the diagram as you're right the 4 definitely looks like p is trying to tell us something.

[gszes]

Lots of variations since declarer can have a variety of the remaining power.
The main theme for declarer is to be able to set something up in dummy and be
able to cash it in order to make game declarer has 6 clubs 1 spade -- the
defense shows at least 1h (2h would not be a shock) so our mission is to try
and make sure declarer cannot make with any holding they could not do so by force.

Pretty much any variation one can dream of requires p to have the spade king for us to have
a chance. A spade switch also has the advantage of attacking what might be a vital entry
back to dummy in cases where declarer wants to set up hearts with xx KQx Q QJT9873
while a club might work as well with that hand how about xx AQx Q QJT9873 that same club switch
allows declarer to now play a heart to the q cash the heart ace and return heart with the spade
ace still in dummy to get back to the 4th heart. Note that setting up a heart trick seems to be a
recurring theme so it seems what is needed is

A spade but which spade?

The main thing here is do not try and get cute when returning a spade make sure you return a LOW
spade so declarer looking at 98x AQ Q QJT9873 (by low I mean avoid the QT7) cannot rise with the
ace dropping your partners stiff K and then finessing you out of your 2 remaining spade honors:)

[Cyberyeti]

gszes, on 2014-August-30, 17:03, said:

A spade but which spade?

The main thing here is do not try and get cute when returning a spade make sure you return a LOW
spade so declarer looking at 98x AQ Q QJT9873 (by low I mean avoid the QT7) cannot rise with the
ace dropping your partners stiff K and then finessing you out of your 2 remaining spade honors:)

If declarer has that, he makes 4 anyway by ducking the spade then taking the spade and heart hooks, our instructions are to beat this.

[rhm]

♠T

I leave it to others to explain why.

Rainer Herrmann

[whereagles]

maybe declarer has


xx
AQx
Q
QJTxxxx

in which case we should play a spade, before he pulls the last trumps and sets up hearts in 3 rounds, finessing in-between. Not sure what Rainer's 10 can achieve though.

[jdgalt]

I lead a low spade in the hope of knocking out declarer's dummy entry. I expect declarer to be 3=3=1=6, 2=4=1=6, or 4=2=1=6. Of course I'm sunk if he has Kx of spades, but I don't think he can be set in that case anyway.

[Cyberyeti]

whereagles, on 2014-August-31, 05:02, said:

maybe declarer has


xx
AQx
Q
QJTxxxx

in which case we should play a spade, before he pulls the last trumps and sets up hearts in 3 rounds, finessing in-between. Not sure what Rainer's 10 can achieve though.

Give partner K8 and declarer 9x to see what the 10 does.

[whereagles]

it goes down regardless.. 1 spade, 1 heart, 1 diamond, 1 club.. or, did I miss something?

[Cyberyeti]

whereagles, on 2014-August-31, 13:00, said:

it goes down regardless.. 1 spade, 1 heart, 1 diamond, 1 club.. or, did I miss something?

You don't get the heart if you lead a small spade and declarer has 9x, AQx, Q, QJxxxxx, partner wins the K and declarer will get his 3rd heart away on the second spade winner.

[whereagles]

ah ok.. cute surrounding play

[Zelandakh]

Someone wrote an online article once giving it as a form of rule always to lead the second highest in cases like this. It was a bit tongue in cheek iirc but also with a fair amount of truth. As an aside, I think it is awful for partner's diamond spot to be 4th highest. If count then surely high even (ie 6), low odd (7) is clearly better. But both attitude and suit preference (essentially the same thing) look better than any count signal. This is not an uncommon theme holding a long suit.

[broze]

Yep, well done to Rainer for the final answer and others for figuring out the relevant layout.

Full deal was:

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So you need to shift to the TS when you are in on the second trick to beat it and if declarer ducks partner also needs to duck, an impossible feat at MPs since p will be too worried declarer has the QS but he might find it at IMPs.