Friday we encountered a nice hand, but opponents fell asleep. Put yourself in their shoes.
You hold:
♠ Kxxxx
♥ Kx
♦ Jxx
♣ xxx
Everyone Vulnerable, your partner opens 1♣, RHO (= me) intervenes 1NT, and everyone passes.
What do you lead?
The player at the table started with a low ♠ which worked out the best possible way, but they didn't realise it. In dummy you get:
♠ Txx
♥ Q9xx
♦ Q9xx
♣ Tx
Partner takes ♠A, continues with the ♠Q and a small ♠ to your K. Declarer discards ♥T. You continue with 2 more ♠s. Partner asks for a ♣ switch (playing Odd/Even signals, he plays ♣5 and discards ♦T), while declarer throws away a ♦ and a ♥ from dummy while discarding a ♣ and a small ♥ from his hand.
Your turn again: what do you play?
At the table, a ♣ was played and I claimed 7 tricks.
Here's the full deal:
| Dealer: | East | | Vul: | Both | | Scoring: | MP | |
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I got triple squeezed on the 5th
♠, so I had to bare my
♥A (baring
♣K would be a disaster, and discarding a
♦ is throwing my 7th trick away).
How could West know what to do? Well, it's pretty simple imo. I don't discard any
♦ in my hand, so I must have 5 of them. With 4 I would keep them in dummy and discard one from my hand. I showed 2
♠s, I must have 3-4
♥s and 2-3
♣s. Either I have
♣Ax and
♥ATxx, or
♣Kxx and
♥ATx. Looking at my discarding, I think it's clear that I only have 3
♥s (the unblocking T at first opportunity), a 5332 is more likely to overcall 1NT rather than a 5422 with a good 5 card suit, so the best chance for defeating the contract should be to play a low
♥ from Kx and hope your partner has
♣A. Another clue that might strengthen this idea is that partner would probably act with a good 6 card
♣ (AQJ9xx or KQJ9xx is good enough to either double or rebid the suit), so he'll only have 5 of them.
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