gnasher, on 2013-March-14, 03:15, said:
I'd just play the hand that bid at the six-level for a singleton. Maybe he planned this in the bidding, by bidding 6♣ with ♥Qx to talk me into going down, but most people aren't that clever.
Surely when RHO has hauled out exclusion keycard at his first call, and one is looking at 6 card support for partner, one may reasonably think that the opps are going to slam no matter what you bid......when partner is favourite to hold 6 cards in our suit, thus giving us a 12 card fit, just how often are the opps ever going to be able to double us?
Even if they want to double us for penalty, there is a good chance that they literally cannot do it because they are playing DOPI.
Thus opener will double with 0 keycards and how often does a 1♠ opener have zero keycards? And he'll pass with 1, but try creating an exclusion hand that would double 6♣ for penalty, rather than bidding slam, if that happened. East knows that we can't possibly work out if he bid on say 0=4=3=6, with his partner being say 3=1=3=6 (can you imagine getting rich on that layout?) or the 2=3=2=6 I am playing him for.
And if opener has (unusually) 2 keycards, then he bids over 6♣ and deprives his side of the ability to double anyway.
Now, if your argument was that this sort of thinking is beyond East, presumably because we have made an assumption to that effect, I can see why you might conclude that E should have a stiff.
I don't make that assumption: to the contrary, I assume that any East looking at any 6 card fit would want to take away the 5 level and, more importantly, the ability to explore for grand that passing 5♣ permits.
As it is, I think the guess for the Q♥ is very close and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to have guessed wrong. However, I don't see why we should assume that E is incapable of thinking as I have outlined, so I think that hooking West because of E's 6♣ is an overly-simplistic approach.
Btw, my analysis is absolutely not based on the notion that East foresaw the problem and was being cute with Qx♥. I think that thinking that way is getting way too far down the rabbit-hole.