[plaur]

Scoring: IMP

1NT - 3NT
play ♥4,8,K,5
back ♥9,J, ?

---

North lead 4th best. South will play back 4th best if he started with 4 or more, except with a good reason not to, and will play highest back from 3.

How do you figure out what to do now as North? Is there any reason not to play the ♥2 hoping partner has the 7?

[han]

I think you should play low (instead of the ace), hoping that partner has the 7 and a minor suit trick. If partner has a doubleton heart then you probably can't beat it.

[plaur]

Scoring: IMP

1NT - 3NT
Lead fourth best ♥4,3,K,5
Return ?

---

Hand seen from the other side. Its a hand from a BI tourney with predealt defense problems. I havnt seen the comments. By accident I played the hand twice and both deals my partner lead back the ♥9.
Can south see that a spade shift is needed?

[han]

No, give partner another heart instead of a little spade and the duck is right.

You need more from partner for the spade shift to be right.

[plaur]

Im not asking bout the heart duck now I am asking if south can see the shift to a spade in trick two instead of returning a heart.

[han]

Ah, Let me put on my south-hat.

Yes, south has good reasons to shift to a spade. If partner can take 4 more hearts off the top then we will likely still beat the contract if we switch to a spade (although this is by no means guaranteed! We may give declarer 4 spades plus the 4 clubs and 1 diamond). We can play a heart when we can get in with the diamond.

If partner has the queen of spades and the ace of hearts as partner has here then we need to switch to a spade immediately. This seems more likely so I think the spade switch is right.

[Edmunte1]

Agree with Hannie. The spade shift is not difficult. You can count for maximum 6hcp in partner's hand, and ♥A is counted as 4 of them. Partener has only 5 cards (only the deuce is missing) so declarer has hearts stopped. If partner doesn't have ♠Q (♥J or ♦Q or♣Q) i don't see any defense (sooner or later the diamonds well provide the tricks). So ♠ return is mandatory

[han]

Edmunte1, on May 28 2007, 04:24 PM, said:

Partener has only 5 cards (only the deuce is missing) so declarer has hearts stopped.

Not quite, partner could have AQ10xx. The point is that if partner has this holding then it is possible that we can get these heart tricks later. But if partner has Qx(x) of spades and the heart ace then we need to shift to spades immediately.

[cherdano]

Hannie, on May 28 2007, 02:27 PM, said:

Ah, Let me put on my south-hat.

Yes, south has good reasons to shift to a spade. If partner can take 4 more hearts off the top then we will likely still beat the contract if we switch to a spade (although this is by no means guaranteed! We may give declarer 4 spades plus the 4 clubs and 1 diamond).

We are giving declarer 3 spade tricks at most, so it seems the spade shift never loses when hearts are running.

[han]

Yup, you are absolutely right.