[Phil]

---

Here's a hand from yesterday's Senior KO's.

Declarer made it but I'm unclear if the line was best.

You reach a nice 7♥ after a kickback sequence.

Plan the play on:

a) trump
b) ♣K

[rduran1216]

i suppose id come down to the ending of

J10x
x
-
j

opposite

AKx
-
A8
-

once i had some kind of count on the other hands id go from there. I can see that this will always be easy with spade Q onside, and maybe its better to just get the misery over with and try it.

[mikeh]

Win in hand. Unblock the diamond, play 2 trump ending in hand, cash AK spades. If the Q appears, claim. Otherwise, cash two diamonds, pitching a spade and a club, ruff a spade. If they were 3-3, claim. If not, run the trump.

If LHO has the long spades, you can't squeeze him in that suit, so pitch your spades and hope rho has KQ♣ and the long diamond.

If rho has the long spade, he may (but probably won't) be squeezed in 3 suits or may be squeezed in clubs and spades and you should be able to read it.


edited by deleting nonsense

[Fluffy]

basic line: spade finese or ♠Q singleton.

on a trump lead there is a small improvement on mikeh's line(except that the 3 rounds of trumps should be drawn, and ♠J should be led from dummy just in case) that wins with ♠Q doubleton or third (56% I think) or a rare squeeze

on a ♣K lead there is a double squeeze looming, unblock ♦Q, and win second trump in hand, if trumps are 2-2 and RHO has 6♦ we have a 100% double squeeze pitching a spade on third diamond, but barring that I think best is just to bank all on spade finese.

[mikeh]

In what universe does any opponent cover the spade J, with the 10 in dummy, when defending even a game, let alone a grandslam?

I understand the 'just in case', but I think that you are increasing your real life odds by precisely 0% against anyone we are likely to be playing in a National Knockout, even a Seniors!

As for the double, we should cash a top spade early, before running the trump, just to add the stiff spade Q to our odds, but that's unnecessary if we already know diamonds are 2=6, having tested that suit, so I am picking nits.

If we are looking for low probabilty plays, we can cater to some adverse spade lies, on the club lead, by winning, running 5 trump, cashing the diamond Q, crossing in spades, cashing the top diamonds, reducing to a 3 card position, with dummy holding J x void J and LHO maybe Qx void void Q. We lead our last diamond, to ruff in dummy, while squeezing LHO.

This needs lho to have Qxxx(x) in spades, which seems more likely than 2=6 diamonds and 2=2 trumps. It also wins if rho fails to recognize the need to hold onto, say, 8xx in spades. He has to make some discards on the trumps and may well not realize the significance of his holding.

I posted this line in my first post, but had wrongly suggested it worked on Qxx in LHO. It does, but only if rho mispitches, so I edited it away.