[Fluffy]

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3NT by south after a heart lead, declarer msses up with coomunications and lets east on lead, who crosses ♣9, to the jack and queen, and a club is back.

West calls you after the deal and tells you that declarer hesitated before winning the club trick where he had ♣K10 left, assuming he had an option not to win in he must have 4 clubs, therefore only if partner can win a trick in diamonds can the contract be defeated. He pitched ♦K on the run of the spades to tell partner that ♦J is vital and must be kept in case declarer plays the hearts.

Neither declarer nor dummy dispute the fact that declarer hesitated on the club trick althou they don't remember doing so.

Any adjustement?

[barmar]

Isn't declarer always making 3♠, 3♥, 2♦ (assuming he finesses the Q), and 1♣? When you say he messed up communication, do you mean he blocked the spades?

[Trinidad]

This is a strange case. Are you sure that you have the play correct?

West comes up with a play that cannot win and throws away the contract. After all, West assumes that East has the ♦J and he is worried the declarer will run dummy's hearts. What can go wrong? If South had four clubs the situation would be (with West still to discard on the spade trick from dummy):

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Why would there be any need to discard the ♦K? It would be an unlucky expert play if the lead would be with South, but with declarer locked in dummy it is plain silly.

Rik

[Fluffy]

thanks for clarifying the diagram Rik, west doesn't need to throw ♦K just yet, but avoids lazyness problems from partner such as declarer exiting a low diamond, or running hearts and making a bad pitch. I think west arguments are feble, but it looks clear that he wouldn't do this without the hesitation.

[Trinidad]

Yep. Got it. Playing the ♦K is not plain silly. It is a good play, if you are sure that East holds the ♦J and you are sure that South holds KJTx. (If South has the ♦J, you blow two tricks for the defense, but you may be willing to sacrifice those to increase the probability that the contract goes down.)

What makes it odd to me is that a West player who is capable of throwing the ♦K, a complicated unblocking play that caters to certain layouts, is silly enough to block the club suit by returning the ♣3. If he would have played back the ♣7, an easy unblocking play, ...

With all this, I can't get any feeling for the level of the players. My first impression -with all these blocking plays- was that the players are not very good. I don't think South is very good, given how he played the contract. In that case South may well have hitched before winning the club trick, just because he was surprised that he was going to win that trick to then realize that it didn't matter which club trick he was going to win.

Bridge-technically, he should of course take the trick in tempo since it doesn't matter whether he wins with the king or the ten. He should do the being surprised and the realizing later. However, you cannot postpone surprise. Surprise comes when it comes and it has priority.

I would take South away from the table and ask him how he "experienced" the first few tricks. Did the play go as he had planned? What did and what didn't? Maybe that will tell whether South hitched and why. If South hitched because he was surprised, I would consider that a bridge reason, certainly for a less experienced player. If South hitched because he was deciding how to play the diamonds, then South doesn't have a bridge reason for hitching before winning the club trick. He should have hitched after winning it (or better: before playing from dummy in trick 1).

Rik

[blackshoe]

It does not look to me like it matters what West does, on the original layout. On Rik's layout, a ♥ looks clear at that point. So I would say West's argument is worse than feeble.

[Fluffy]

Trinidad, on 2012-October-28, 09:46, said:

What makes it odd to me is that a West player who is capable of throwing the ♦K, a complicated unblocking play that caters to certain layouts, is silly enough to block the club suit by returning the ♣3. If he would have played back the ♣7, an easy unblocking play, ...

♣7 is fatal when declarer has ♣KJ106 as he ends up with K6 sitting over east's 8

[Sjoerds]

I am not sure about the play, but when west discards ♦K leader has 7 tricks?
So when he is aware of the club holding there is only one reasonable way for 9 tricks and that is finishing the ♦K.
So is there any relation between the result and the hesitation?