That is the hand.
This is the rest of the hand from the last post “The Hand that almost was.”
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North |
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♠ 9 |
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♥ K752 |
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◊AK652 |
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West |
♣ AJ7 |
East |
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♠ A1065 |
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♠ KQJ874 |
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♥ 10843 |
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♥ 6 |
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◊ J74 |
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◊983 |
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♣ 109 |
South |
♣Q42 |
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♠ 32 |
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♥ AQJ9 |
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◊ Q10 |
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♣ K8653 |
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Dealer East. E-W Vul.
You are South in six hearts. After west led spade, spade. You ruff and test trump with two rounds, discovering trump broke 4-4-4-1.
Rather then just depending on the diamond suit breaking 3-3 which is only about 35% chance. Best line of play is to play two rounds of clubs first. Club to the king and club to the ace. If the club queen dropped doubleton you just made the hand. Otherwise draw the rest of the trumps discard the club from dummy and play for diamonds to break 3-3. There maybe squeeze chances even if both minor suits don’t break. You may not want to draw the rest of the trumps before testing clubs as that squeezes dummy.
If you play as suggested you win 13 imps as our opponents at the other table stopped in five hearts.
Their auction was:
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West |
North |
East |
South |
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2S |
pass |
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4S |
DBL |
pass |
5H |
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pass |
pass |
pass |
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Bridge-related
The tradeoff with the line you suggest is that if the hand that has four hearts has zero or one clubs and three diamonds you are going to go down.
So what is more likely the Qx of clubs or the risk of club shortness with the long trump? I haven’t done the math but I think the line you suggest is somewhat better.