[whereagles]

Matchpoints, intermediate field

South to play 6NT on the lead of the 6 of hearts

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You take the queen in hand and, since you're going to need the spade finesse sooner or later, you run the ♠Q now. This loses to RHO, who plays another heart. Obviously LHO has the ♥K, but you can't read much into that lead since LHO is not a strong player.

The simple way out is to take the diamond finesse, but there may be other chances. How would you continue? Hint: ♠10 now collects two non-descript small spades.

[lamford]

I would play rather simply by cashing two top diamonds and then cashing the spades and then the ace and ten of clubs overtaking with the jack. That seems to work whenever the queen of diamonds drops or East has Qx(x) of clubs.

And I might well have led a heart from Kxx(x) against an opening bid of 6NT ...

[gnasher]

lamford, on 2014-September-10, 06:07, said:

I would play rather simply by cashing two top diamonds and then cashing the spades and then the ace and ten of clubs overtaking with the jack. That seems to work whenever the queen of diamonds drops or East has Qx(x) of clubs.

Or ♣Qxxx(+) and ♦Q, because he'll be squeezed. I think that makes your line about 65%

[nige1]

And if LHO has singleton ♦Q, you probably succeed on a double-squeeze, no matter who has ♣Q

[gszes]

gnasher, on 2014-September-10, 16:20, said:

Or ♣Qxxx(+) and ♦Q, because he'll be squeezed. I think that makes your line about 65%

and anytime rho holds the dia stop and stiff club Q lho is squeezed because they cannot hold
4 clubs and the heart K (a tiny bit extra on top of 65%) but that's trivial pursuit compared to
avoiding these contracts in the first place.


We should quit encouraging these overbids hehe 65% after getting a favorable opening lead
that eliminated 50% of the defensive holdings that would set 6n (anytime lho held Kx (however
many x hearts) the actual odds were probably less than 34% before the opening lead.

[whereagles]

I thought it would be close: one line requires a finesse + break, the other a finesse+squeeze or a drop.

In practice RHO held ♦Qxx and ♣Qxx, so the more complicated line wins.

[PhantomSac]

gnasher, on 2014-September-10, 16:20, said:

Or ♣Qxxx(+) and ♦Q, because he'll be squeezed. I think that makes your line about 65%

If LHO has 2 spades and 4 hearts you can play for the triple squeeze also since it'd be a 4-3 favorite. Or in other cases where you can *gasp* read the position because LHO is not strong and might start squirming pretty hard with everything.