[lamford]

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West leads the king of clubs against your pushy Six Spades. You win and take the ruffing heart finesse. East covers. Over to you.

[gnasher]

My basic plan is to ruff, cross in trumps, cash the heart, and ruff another heart. If ♥J comes down and spades are 2-2 I discard a diamond on a heart; otherwise I lead up to ♦J.

There's also an intrafinesse possibility in diamonds: after the third round of hearts, run ♦7 through West, then use dummy's remaining trump entry to run the jack through East. That works when the suit is 10x=Q9xx etc, and survives against 10xx=Q9x etc, but it usually loses when the queen is on the left. To play this, we'd need strong evidence that West was short in diamonds. Perhaps we should do this if RHO shows out on the third heart or the first trump?

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2013-January-15, 16:08

[JLOGIC]

to play that you would just need LHO to be incapable of playing low smoothly on the diamond with the queen. As always, it depends on the level of your opps.

Personally I think you'd have a huge edge against most people by playing a diamond up at some point and running it if it's ducked.

[gnasher]

Unfortunately by the time we get to the diamond suit we'll have given away a lot about our hand. We'll be known to have spades headed by the AKQ, a heart void, and apparently no more clubs.

Maybe I give my opponents too much credit, but against good players I'd find it hard to go against the odds when they've got so much information.

[JLOGIC]

I doubt they will be ready for the 7 of diamonds up to the Jxx. Maybe they will but it's a hard play to account for and be ready for. They have to realize we're out of clubs which might take a few seconds, and they have to find the duck smoothly. But I admit I might be scared of this line vs very good opps. It would be different to me if it was even J8x in dummy or something, then they might instinctively duck, but a low (ok the 7 is not low but it seems low) diamond up to the Jxx is an unusual play that is hard to plan for at trick 1 or even as the play is developing well enough to smooth duck I think. This is especially true when the diamond is the 7 and not the 8.

[lamford]

JLOGIC, on 2013-January-15, 19:44, said:

I doubt they will be ready for the 7 of diamonds up to the Jxx. Maybe they will but it's a hard play to account for and be ready for. They have to realize we're out of clubs which might take a few seconds, and they have to find the duck smoothly. But I admit I might be scared of this line vs very good opps. It would be different to me if it was even J8x in dummy or something, then they might instinctively duck, but a low (ok the 7 is not low but it seems low) diamond up to the Jxx is an unusual play that is hard to plan for at trick 1 or even as the play is developing well enough to smooth duck I think. This is especially true when the diamond is the 7 and not the 8.

I think your line is right in practice. West did have 10x in diamonds, and three trumps. Another line is to cross to the second trump (after throwing a club on a top heart and ruffing a heart). East shows out, and now East is 6:5 on to have any specific non-trump, so you can run the jack of diamonds from dummy. You still pick up 10x or 9x with West. You lose to Qx, QTxx and Q9xx with West, and gain on 10x and 9x, stiff 10 and stiff 9, so it is close. I must confess I played the boring line of a diamond to the jack.

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is the full hand - save me typing it!