[mikeh]

Your partnership has just changed to a complex inverted structure and you both have a forget. The 1C opening is systemic. S should have bid 3N over 2C to show 2-3 clubs and 17-19: 2H was an artificial gf, but denied the hand he held. North should have bid 2N over 2H to show a balanced gf hand (no stiff or void). We had just the week before changed this, so 3C showed short diamonds. Given that this implied at least 6 clubs, a stiff diamond other than the Ace implied at least AQxxxx in clubs, hence 6N.<br><br>Anyway, if we'd bid well, there'd be no problem. The lead is the club J and, while LHO is capable of leading this from QJ tight, you decide that he has not done so...he has either Jx or, more likely, stiff Jack. Over to you: can you justify your overbidding?

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[Winstonm]

The spade club squeeze has to work, so giving east 4 clubs and 4 spades, there isn't much room for the diamond Q, but it can't hurt to play on hearts to get a complete (assumed) count after winning the club K. 4 hearts, pitching a club lets us take the diamond finesse against either east or west and still get back to hand with a spade to cash the last diamond as a squeeze card.

[Tramticket]

Thanks for the problem Mike. Here is my thinking, written out in full, not for your benefit, but for mine as a learning exercise (I'm usually rubbish at spotting squeeze opportunities at the table).

We have 11 tricks on top (3 spades / 4 hearts / 2 diamonds / 2 clubs) and a successful diamond finesse would still leave us a trick short. This could be a club finesse, but as you say, it is likely that East has the ♣Q. This seems to leave a squeeze as the only route to the thirteenth trick. If we assume that East has the club guard, we have a two-card menace against East. The other menace can't be in diamonds, because we have assumed a successful finesse for our 12th trick. But since our opponents only hold seven spades, only one can guard the fourth round and playing three rounds of spades will isolate a menace against the opponent with with the longer spades. It seems that we need East to hold 4+ spades so that we can create some pressure. so we are working towards a squeeze against East with the 4th spade as a one-card menace and the ♣A10 as the two-card menace. Finally, the squeeze card must be in the South hand and could be either the fourth heart or the third diamond.

The Problem: We have a two-way finesse in diamonds. Which way should we finesse?

The opponents only hold eight points, so there is little to be learnt from their passing throughout. It is normal to make a passive lead against a grand slam and opponents suit is likely to be passive, so the lead looks to be normal and I don't think it tells us much. What about counting the opponents' shape? We could play three top spades, but if spades are 4-3 we will learn nothing and the only time it will gain is if East shows out, in which case we have to fall back on the club finesse.

We can test the hearts first before taking the diamond finesse, as long as we leave an entry back to hand. If we need to finesse against West we won't have an entry in diamonds, so we will need to leave the spades until later. So we win the K♣ and cash four rounds of hearts, discarding a club on the fourth heart and then:

Unless East is void or singleton in hearts, West will hold longer diamonds (since we can assume that East holds four spades and three/four clubs) and we should guess to finesse against West for the ♦Q. if East is void in hearts, we run the spades before running the hearts and East will be progressively squeezed in three suits.


Winstonm's answer was shorter!

[ahydra]

I would play it the same way. Win ♣K, run four hearts to see what happens. Assuming nothing exciting then finesse West for the ♦Q, unblock DA, back to hand with SA and proceed to squeeze East in the blacks.

ahydra