[frank0]

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I played with partner I know against 2 random BBO players. I know you have something to say about bidding but I'm mainly asking about defense in this thread.

Partner led a ♥4 you won the Q and cashed the A where declare followed 23 and partner followed 7 on A, we played 3/5 against trump contract so clearly declare had another ♥.

What's next? Do you try to lead a ♣(active) to set up a trick to prevent declare getting Axx xxx AJxxx Jx or ♥K hope declare has something like Ax xxx AJxxx Qxx.

There are some other possibilities but those are hands come to my mind which the play matters and the bidding is still barely make sense.

I chose active defense(♣) but my partner thought passive defense(♥) is better.

Any opinion?

I'll post the full hand after receiving some comments.

[inquiry]

Lets start by making assumptions.
1) Partner is minimum for his bid, lets say 5 to 8 hcp.
2) Declarer has five or more diamonds to the Ace, so partners hcp are not in hearts or diamonds.
3) If partner had the ♠AK he would have started one of them, or played his highest heart at trick two at least.

So partner has something like Ace or king of spades, and a club honor. Probably the worst he can have is ♠Kxxx ♥xxx ♦Jx ♣Jxxx. A passive lead will get it. if he is any stronger, a passive lead will also get it. A club back risk letting declarer score his club queen and not lose a club. The only hand you really need to worry about is partner with five clubs to the queen or jack, and not the a and k of spades. In this case, if it is the club jack, you are not beating it (declarer has three spades to an honor), you will NEVER get your club trick.

So to go active, you play partner for five clubs to queen, where you need to set your club trick up before spades can get going. That is a very specific hand. Something like
♠Kxx ♥xxx ♦xx ♣Qxxxx. So a club back always works when partner has the queen (four or five times) and a passive return always works if partner has only 4 clubs (partner needs a spade ace or king for his bid). Of the specific cases, passive fits more hand types, so I agree with your partner, especially since if parnter had ♣QJ(T/9)XX he might have started a high club, so some of the five card club suits might be eliminated when partner has the club queen.

[FrancesHinden]

The only concrete piece of evidence you have from the play is partner's second heart. Partner has a choice of hearts to play, and this is his one opportunity to give you suit preference.
Our agreement is that playing the top heart is suit preference for spades, while the bottom heart is neutral or clubs (given he only has 2 hearts left, he can't give 3 messages).
So with both a top spade honour _and_ the queen of clubs, he'll play his lowest heart, but with the A or K of spades and only jack high clubs, he plays his highest heart.

So I think partner should be promising either no black suit honours, or the queen of clubs. If you've discussed this, you then don't have to work out the relative odds of various hand types, as Inquiry as done, rather you know where partner's high cards are.

p.s. note that in this type of position, suit preference isn't telling you what suit he wants you to play, necessarily, it's telling you where his high cards are so that you can decide what is best. A very subtle difference.