Thursday, September 3, 2009

Declarer Play Problem

Last night at the club I had what I found to be a very interesting declarer play hand. I spent probably 8 or 9 minutes on it and still got it wrong. And I've been trying to think of how I could legitimately make this and I can't find a way.

Q8x
JT7x
K8x
Axx
xx KTx
9xxx AQx
J9xx AT
QJ8 97xxx
AJ97x
K8
Qxxx
KT


East opened 1C and I wound up in 4S. West leads the club queen. How do you play this hand? I kept thinking I should be able to make this contract but I have yet to find a way to legitimately do it. The bidding and opening lead pinpoints all the honors, so I figured if I could hold my losers to a spade, a heart, and a diamond. But there really aren't enough entried to dummy to lead toward the diamond Q, lead toward the heart K, take a spade finesse, take a ruffing finesse in hearts.

I guess the line I took needed east to be 2-4-2-5 to work, which is certainly possible. I won trick 1 in dummy and played a heart to the K and a heart ducked to east's Q. I won the club return in my hand and played the jack of spades, which east won and led a 3rd round of clubs, ruffed with the 9. I had already lost 2 tricks and have 1 more sure loser and I need to figure out something to do with the last diamond. I can set up a heart for a diamond discard, and then lead a diamond from dummy toward my Q and then duck the next round. But I need 2 entries to dummy to do that. I chose to finesse the 8 of spades to create that second entry but when east won and led back his 3rd trump, I was down 2. Another option I considered at that point was to play a spade to the Q and then lead a diamond. If east was indeed 2-4-2-5, he could promote west's possible 10 of spades for their 4th trick. does anyone see a better line of play? It seems like taking a spade finesse right away might work, but then there's still the problem of getting to dummy again to lead the red suits. I may get spades right but wind up with 3 diamond losers. Maybe it's right to go ahead and strip out the club suit and then play the ace and jack of spades.

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