[helium]

You open a 15-17 1NT whit this hand:

♠ KO6
♥AK654
♦94
♣K103


all pass en dummy comes:

♠AJ92
♥ J9
♦ Q1085
♣ 975

LHO leads a small ♠ and you use the K from the hand.

How do you play the♥suit?

If you play a small ♥ to dummys J9 and LHO plays small in temp, do you play the J or the 9? whats the best odds?

thanks


I

[kenberg]

Leading a small heart at trick 2 seems right to me.

I would probably play the 9 on the reasoning: If lho had the T w/o the Q he would surely play low, if he had the Q w/o the T he probably should play low but he might not.

Since, if you were holding AKTx(x), you had the option of running the 9 from the board it seems lho can pretty well assume, whenever he holds the Q but not the T, that his partner holds something of value in the heart suit. But it does take a bit to work out the various possibilities. Perhaps he has trained himself to play low in tempo in such situations but even so, sometimes he is dealt the T w/o the Q.

Thanks to my various tens and nines in the minors I expect that they cannot take the heart and then six more minors right away, so getting this guess right should bring it all home.

If the 9 loses to rho's Q and a spade comes back, I think I had better win on the board. I cash the heart J, everyone follows I hope, get back to me hand with the remaining spades. There are eight tricks if I could arrange the entries, but I think I had better settle for seven.

If he has smoothly played low holding Qx, ask him if he would like to play with you as a partner sometime.