Sadly, I forget the auction (maybe Tim knows it), but you're declaring 3N with these hands:
A742
AQ75
T82
QT
QT9
KJT
A74
KJ97
To start off, you duck the DK lead and win the 2nd as RHO pitches a club. RHO wins the 3rd round of clubs and plays a 4th (LHO follows once and then pitches 3 diamonds).
I'll turn it over here. If forced to make pitches, each opponent will cling to one minor suit winner.
Say you cash your hearts and come down to this 3 card ending with the lead in dummy:
A7
-
T
-
QT9
-
-
-
LHO has a diamond, RHO a club, and they each have 2 spades (if you care, LHO had 4 small hearts). Now what?
More later.
In the 3-card ending, you might as well lead your diamond. Now if RHO pitches a spade you have a guess to make -- without any inference from the bidding there is no theoretically "right" play for either declarer or defense. There is a mixed equilibrium where RHO *sometimes* bares the SK when he has it, and declarer sometimes plays to drop it. In practice, given the conditions, I guess I would play to drop it on the basis that experts are showoffs and will bare the K more often than theoretically correct, here that would be about 1/4 of the time he has it. (The fact that you know his shape was 4-2-1-6, hence suspect he has the SK, should in theory make him bare the K less often to compensate, but even many experts probably don't know that!) This is very subjective and depends completely on the opponent. Against weak opposition, never play for the drop.
ReplyDeleteThe one play that is 100% wrong is for righty to pitch a club when he does not have the SK, giving you no losing option.