[inquiry]

[FONT=Courier]

Scoring: IMP

West North East South

 -     -     Pass  1♦
 Pass  1♠    Pass  2♥
 Pass  3♦    Pass  4♣
 Pass  4♦    Pass  4NT
 Pass  5♥    Pass  5NT
 Pass 6♦ all pass--->>>

Let's change to 6NT.

---

This was an interesting hands that occurred in todays round robin 12 of the White House Juniors, both rooms (Norway and France) had no trouble reaching 6♦ and both made when trumps were 2-2, via 3H, 6D, 1S, 1C and 1H ruff.

At the table I watched, the opening lead was a spade ducked to the King (dropping the Queen). One commentator suggested that the hand could make on 3-3 hearts or a club/heart squeeze, but alas there is no entry to the dummies club threat. The club Queen might as well be stranded on the "moon".

But in fact, should the contract have been 6NT or should declearer had won the first spade trick, there is still potential in the club queen as a moon threat. In fact, imagine you are playing six notrump and the opening lead is a spade (to make it easy for you I will tell you the spade king is behind the the spade ace). Do you have a play if the heart suit doesn't split? In otherwords, is there power in your Club Queen as a moon threat?

The importatn lesson here is if this sometimes two losers can be better than one
:-)

[awm]

Spoiler

A strip squeeze can still operate without the dummy entry -- just win the spade lead and run all the diamonds and hearts. In the end position we have small heart and ♣Ax in hand, and ♣Qxx in dummy. If the person with the club king also has the long hearts, then in principle we can always make, since if the club king is bare we have two club tricks and if not we can effect a throw-in with the long heart. The problem is, it may be difficult (especially against good defenders) to determine whether the club king has been bared. This is perhaps easier if we play in 6♦ with trumps not breaking, since we can ruff some of the small spades thereby reducing the number of unknown cards in the victim's hand.