[xeno123]

So this is the sort of hand you don't see in most beginner or intermediate bridge books because there are lots of possible lines and it's hard to even think about which is best. In the actual MP tournament there were a lot of people in 4♥ except for the lucky few that rebid 2♠ and settled there. Although the hand is makeable if you choose just the right line, nobody made it, with 4 people (including me) going down 1, 11 going down 2, a couple going down 3 and 4 unfortunates going down 4.

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So one challenge is to figure out how to make it double dummy after the lead of the 2 of hearts (without using GIB of course).

But the more interesting challenge is to explain how to think about a hand like this where there are many options - cross ruff spades and diamonds, set up spades, play to the clubs, and any other options that might occur to you.

And also what do folks think about the rebid of hearts instead of spades? The strong hearts and motley spades led me to the choice of hearts, but is there a way to think about this more generally assuming the suits were more normal?

[kuhchung]

Just always rebid hearts.

I confess I would go down quickly. My thoughts are, I have no tricks if I draw trumps, so I won't. To get any sort of crossruff going, I'll have to play a spade and lose the lead, so let me do that first. Win the HK, lead a spade to my hand. Looks like they'll get CAK SA and the H9 now. Oops.

[nige1]

xeno123, on 2018-March-01, 09:34, said:

So this is the sort of hand you don't see in most beginner or intermediate bridge books because there are lots of possible lines and it's hard to even think about which is best. In the actual MP tournament there were a lot of people in 4♥ except for the lucky few that rebid 2♠ and settled there. Although the hand is makeable if you choose just the right line, nobody made it, with 4 people (including me) going down 1, 11 going down 2, a couple going down 3 and 4 unfortunates going down 4.
So one challenge is to figure out how to make it double dummy after the lead of the 2 of hearts (without using GIB of course).
But the more interesting challenge is to explain how to think about a hand like this where there are many options - cross ruff spades and diamonds, set up spades, play to the clubs, and any other options that might occur to you.
And also what do folks think about the rebid of hearts instead of spades? The strong hearts and motley spades led me to the choice of hearts, but is there a way to think about this more generally assuming the suits were more normal?

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An expert might suss it out, winning the ♥ lead in hand and playing a ♣.
Winning East's ♦ return with dummy's ♦A and setting up ♠K.
LHO will probably win the next ♣ lead to lead another trump but
Declarer can eventually scramble home with 1 x ♠ + 1 x ♦ + 2 x ♣ + 6 x ♥