[pescetom]

This board cropped up in a practice tournament at the club last week, but would have figured well in a Bermuda Bowl, unlike the auction.

MP

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North leads ♦3 to J of South.
Your game plan now?

[DavidKok]

Spoiler

Again without spending too long on it: if the hearts split 4-2, which is improbable but not impossible, we can win the ace, heart to the ace, heart ruffed (high, just in case), low diamond to the nine (thanks for the entry), heart ruffed high, draw trumps, club to the ace, and play three high hearts for +1.
My main concern is that 2♠ bid. Likely South has four spades, meaning North has exactly four, meaning hearts split 5-1 (or 6-0). Then my plan doesn't work. A simple alternative is to win and immediately play a spade to the queen. If North has the king we win always, only losing one spade (eventually pitching the losing club on the ♥K). If South has the king there's a slim chance they don't have a diamond to return in light of that ♦J on trick one, which gives us the timing to ruff the third spade. But I don't believe it - opponents with two singletons (hearts and diamonds, per my assumption) bid more.
Both lines leave something to be desired. North is the favourite to hold the ♠K, and I think the hearts rate to split 5-1 and the spades 4-4, but there's room to do better than my second line. But I'll leave it here for now, just the start of an actual analysis.

[mike777]

Low towards QS.

[kcostell]

Assume North is 5-5 in the majors. I think you can get an extra chance under that assumption.

Run all your trumps. On the last one North has to come down to a singleton in a black suit to keep three hearts.

If they're down to a singleton club you discard a club from board and cash the ace of clubs. If the King doesn't drop you then play three rounds of hearts and hope North has the King of Spades and is endplayed.

If they're down to a singleton spade, you discard a spade from board and cash the ace of spades, again switching to three rounds of hearts if no King drops.

This should work as long as you figure out the distribution and North has either black king.

[mikeh]

DavidKok, on 2024-December-05, 16:10, said:

Spoiler

Again without spending too long on it: if the hearts split 4-2, which is improbable but not impossible, we can win the ace, heart to the ace, heart ruffed (high, just in case), low diamond to the nine (thanks for the entry), heart ruffed high, draw trumps, club to the ace, and play three high hearts for +1.
My main concern is that 2♠ bid. Likely South has four spades, meaning North has exactly four, meaning hearts split 5-1 (or 6-0). Then my plan doesn't work. A simple alternative is to win and immediately play a spade to the queen. If North has the king we win always, only losing one spade (eventually pitching the losing club on the ♥K). If South has the king there's a slim chance they don't have a diamond to return in light of that ♦J on trick one, which gives us the timing to ruff the third spade. But I don't believe it - opponents with two singletons (hearts and diamonds, per my assumption) bid more.
Both lines leave something to be desired. North is the favourite to hold the ♠K, and I think the hearts rate to split 5-1 and the spades 4-4, but there's room to do better than my second line. But I'll leave it here for now, just the start of an actual analysis.

I do not believe that there is any reliable inference to be drawn from the 2S bid..in the sense of expecting that it shows 4 spades. South should bid 2S with 3=1 majors. So north can easily be 5=5.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2024-December-06, 03:33, said:

I do not believe that there is any reliable inference to be drawn from the 2S bid..in the sense of expecting that it shows 4 spades. South should bid 2S with 3=1 majors. So north can easily be 5=5.

Interesting. I drew the same inference as Davidkok, that South would only bid 2S after the X with 4 card support (they are not a particularly advanced pair). But I agree that is not a great agreement and others are possible, it would be sensible to ask opponents.

Off the top of my head, maybe it would make sense to bid a major after double *only* with 3=1, with Pass inviting partner to take out to hearts if obliged (correction to spades is non-forcing) and XX asking for a 5 card suit (correction to oM is forcing).

[pescetom]

DavidKok, on 2024-December-05, 16:10, said:

Spoiler

Again without spending too long on it: if the hearts split 4-2, which is improbable but not impossible, we can win the ace, heart to the ace, heart ruffed (high, just in case), low diamond to the nine (thanks for the entry), heart ruffed high, draw trumps, club to the ace, and play three high hearts for +1.
My main concern is that 2♠ bid. Likely South has four spades, meaning North has exactly four, meaning hearts split 5-1 (or 6-0). Then my plan doesn't work. A simple alternative is to win and immediately play a spade to the queen. If North has the king we win always, only losing one spade (eventually pitching the losing club on the ♥K). If South has the king there's a slim chance they don't have a diamond to return in light of that ♦J on trick one, which gives us the timing to ruff the third spade. But I don't believe it - opponents with two singletons (hearts and diamonds, per my assumption) bid more.
Both lines leave something to be desired. North is the favourite to hold the ♠K, and I think the hearts rate to split 5-1 and the spades 4-4, but there's room to do better than my second line. But I'll leave it here for now, just the start of an actual analysis.

mike777, on 2024-December-05, 18:48, said:

Low towards QS.

Which is basically Davidkok's second line.

That was my first thought too, although I was concerned that if South had the K he would return a diamond like lightning. But I couldn't see any real alternative and it seemed more likely than not that the K was in North, hopefully with no second trump. I too had read the auction as spades 4-4 and I didn't see this conservative player overcalling vulnerable on KJxx QJxxx x(x) xx(x).

So I played low towards the Q and the K appeared in North, followed by the lead of another spade. After that it was plain sailing and 6♦ turned out to be a vice-top below a 6NT and the rest in 5♦+1 or 3NT+3. The analysis indicated that 6NT was the Par. I was pleased for my promising intermediate partner who had spotted and called the slam, move on to next board.

But something was troubling me and it was only on the way home that I realised what it was.

Spoiler

If North does have both black Kings then I could have squeezed him in three suits. After 5 trumps he already needs to retain Kx QJxx Kx and on the 6th he has to stiff a K or reduce to 3 hearts.

This is also a great example for I/A of why a Par is not to be taken blindly, I could have made 13 tricks. The squeeze could have been broken by a lead of ♥Q, but that didn't happen here.

[pescetom]

kcostell, on 2024-December-05, 22:49, said:

Assume North is 5-5 in the majors. I think you can get an extra chance under that assumption.

Run all your trumps. On the last one North has to come down to a singleton in a black suit to keep three hearts.

If they're down to a singleton club you discard a club from board and cash the ace of clubs. If the King doesn't drop you then play three rounds of hearts and hope North has the King of Spades and is endplayed.

If they're down to a singleton spade, you discard a spade from board and cash the ace of spades, again switching to three rounds of hearts if no King drops.

This should work as long as you figure out the distribution and North has either black king.

Spoiler

You are very close, see the spoiler in my other post.
But I think the squeeze will only be possible if North holds both black Kings.
And maybe you miscounted, or meant "to keep four hearts".
On the last trump North has 7 cards remaining and could be down to Kx QKxx K or Kx QJxxx having already pitched clubs K.
So after the last trump he is down to Kx QJxx.
But you can still clobber him anyway, by pitching the 4th heart and squeezing him with a small club to A.
Now he has to stiff the K or reduce to 3 hearts, you discard accordingly.

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2024-December-06, 11:11, said:

Which is basically Davidkok's second line.

That was my first thought too, although I was concerned that if South had the K he would return a diamond like lightning. But I couldn't see any real alternative and it seemed more likely than not that the K was in North, hopefully with no second trump. I too had read the auction as spades 4-4 and I didn't see this conservative player overcalling vulnerable on KJxx QJxxx x(x) xx(x).

So I played low towards the Q and the K appeared in North, followed by the lead of another spade. After that it was plain sailing and 6♦ turned out to be a vice-top below a 6NT and the rest in 5♦+1 or 3NT+3. The analysis indicated that 6NT was the Par. I was pleased for my promising intermediate partner who had spotted and called the slam, move on to next board.

But something was troubling me and it was only on the way home that I realised what it was.

Spoiler

If North does have both black Kings then I could have squeezed him in three suits. After 5 trumps he already needs to retain Kx QJxx Kx and on the 6th he has to stiff a K or reduce to 3 hearts.

This is also a great example for I/A of why a Par is not to be taken blindly, I could have made 13 tricks. The squeeze could have been broken by a lead of ♥Q, but that didn't happen here.

As regular readers know, I strongly believe that anyone posting a play problem owes it to all readers to disclose EVERY bit of information that the real life declarer had. Here, for example, knowing that declarer considered north to be conservative is relevant, if only to the extent of modifying one’s views on the likelihood of possible distributions. A conservative bidder, holding at best KJ and QJ in his long suits, vulnerable, is far more likely to be 5-5 than would be an aggressive bidder. In addition, a conservative bidder is more likely than an aggressive bidder to hold both black kings. While this isn’t one of those ‘sure thing’ inferences one sometimes gets, it’s a clue and, since declarer in real life had it, we should have it as well. It’s simply wrong, imo, to hold back information even when the OP doesn’t think it’s relevant. It’s worse when, as here, the OP does recognize its relevance.

End of rant (until the next time)

The squeeze is pretty obvious to a skilled player, but knowing that north is favourite to hold at least the spade king and, more than would an aggressive player, the club king gives us a reasonable play for 13 tricks. Run the trump…reducing to Qx AK10 void A. North has to keep 3 hearts. Most defenders give count honestly when defending slams even when they ‘should’ know that count is irrelevant to partner, so against a non expert I’d expect to have a virtually full inferential count.

North will have reduced to 2=3=0=1 or 1=3=0=2. If I believe the former, club to the ace. If that doesn’t drop the king, I play three rounds of hearts. North is 99% likely to hold the spade king, so he’s endplayed.

If the club king drops, I’m in the delicious position of being mid-way through a progressive squeeze…back to the spade ace, cash the club Queen and north surrenders if he has the spade king.

I think the squeeze line is obviously best regardless. The fact that it may yield an overtrick is merely the icing on the cake, made more probable by knowing north to be conservative. So the withheld information isn’t actually relevant other than to strengthen declarer’s view of how to play and increase his anticipation of a possible overtrick. Nevertheless, I repeat my (never-ending) plea that posters of such problems provide every scrap of information available at the table even if it appears likely to be irrelevant. Not every player appreciates how useful information may be, whether it’s positive (as here…knowing that north is conservative affects our views) or negative….knowing that an aggressive player didn’t take action when, on some plausible lies, he would/might have done something.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2024-December-06, 13:07, said:

Not every player appreciates how useful information may be, whether it’s positive (as here…knowing that north is conservative affects our views) or negative….knowing that an aggressive player didn’t take action when, on some plausible lies, he would/might have done something.

I do appreciate, as I think you will recognise from other posts.
Maybe I should have said it earlier, maybe I should have not said it at all.
The problem here is that this is club bridge, not Bermuda Bowl.
North is no more conservative than the average experienced player in my club, but that (as I belatedly reflected) is still a lot more conservative than many people reading here.
Maybe I should have said "average among the experienced players in a generally conservative club".

[nullve]

mikeh, on 2024-December-06, 13:07, said:

As regular readers know, I strongly believe that anyone posting a play problem owes it to all readers to disclose EVERY bit of information that the real life declarer had.

Did we get all the information declarer had here?

[mikeh]

nullve, on 2024-December-06, 15:15, said:

Did we get all the information declarer had here?

What additional information do you think might be relevant? The diamond lead was uninformative…could have been from any of 1, 2, 3 or four cards but not, since it wasn’t ruffed, from 5.

[nullve]

mikeh, on 2024-December-06, 16:27, said:

What additional information do you think might be relevant? The diamond lead was uninformative…could have been from any of 1, 2, 3 or four cards but not, since it wasn’t ruffed, from 5.

mikeh, on 2024-December-06, 13:07, said:

It’s simply wrong, imo, to hold back information even when the OP doesn’t think it’s relevant. It’s worse when, as here, the OP does recognize its relevance.

[...]

I repeat my (never-ending) plea that posters of such problems provide every scrap of information available at the table even if it appears likely to be irrelevant.