rainbow@ihuxe.UUCP (07/29/83)
NORTH
S:J63
H:72
D:AT63
C:Q865
N:AKQT98
SOUTH
S:AKQT98
H:K6
D:7
C:AK72
S W N E
2C -- 2D 2H
2S -- 3S --
4N -- 5D --
6S -- -- --
West leads the 9 of clubs.
If East has the Ace of hearts and if clubs break three-two, there is no
problem with the hand. But you lean over to your left a little and notice
that it was a singleton placing JT43 with East(Actually thats the only
possible reason for not leading a heart). So you bow your head in silence
for a moment and utter a short prayer to the great Card God in the sky
and hope he's smiling upon you this day. Unfortunately dummy doesn't
have enough entries to finesse clubs twice and hearts once. So you look
up at the table again, leaning a little to your right, and notice the
KQJ of diamonds in the corner of East's hand. With a sigh of relief, you
preserve dummy's Queen of clubs as a later entry, draw trumps, finesse the
King of hearts or wait until East has to pitch down to his bare Ace of
hearts(depending on the trump break) to set up a heart trick, play the rest
of the trumps and wait to see whether East decides to give you an extra
diamond or club trick. If you determine this isn't the lie of the cards by
East's pitches, you can still hope your opponents aren't good players. West
may not have a singleton club or East may decide that protecting a diamond
honor is more important than keeping his clubs. Two things to remember are
not to pitch any of dummy's cards needed for transportation and to rectify
the count by giving East his heart trick. I cannot see any other reasonable
attempts at making the contract without further peeking into the opponents'
card holdings. And even then I'd say the odds are definitely not in my favor
for making the contract with the 9 of clubs lead.