[WesleyC]

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Knockout Match @ IMPs

East opens with 2D (multi).
West's 2H is pass/correct.
East's 2NT shows 23-24 Balanced.

What do you lead?

[billw55]

edit: ah, OP is fixed.

Now I lead a club.

[whereagles]

a bird/anthias 8♠

[Fluffy]

a club

[mikeh]

a club

A club MIGHT yield the 9th trick but that is improbable, and in any event any other lead could do the same thing. In the meantime, a club offers a clear path to a set on a myriad of layouts.

[Phil]

A heart is interesting.

LHO didn't Stayman but didn't look for a minor suit game. And he didn't bid 2!s so he might have short hearts but he won't have short spades. I'm really expecting some club length to come down.

I'm not so much worried about giving up the 9th as losing a tempo.

[mikeh]

Phil, on 2014-November-25, 17:04, said:

A heart is interesting.

LHO didn't Stayman but didn't look for a minor suit game. And he didn't bid 2!s so he might have short hearts but he won't have short spades. I'm really expecting some club length to come down.

I'm not so much worried about giving up the 9th as losing a tempo.

welcome back, Phil

Altho I am not sure if I agree with your inference about LHO not having short spades. If he has (relative) shortness in both majors, and the weak hand the auction suggests and that he needs if we are to beat this contract, then he will always be bidding 2♥.

[Jinksy]

It looks like anything could be right, even a ♦, though I don't have much hope of setting it (other than this being posted as a problem, obv). I'm not sure Bird/Anthias logic applies to a ♠ here, since P had the chance to open a weak 2. And with our points and his failure to open, what entry are we ever hoping to find to his hand if his ♠s are as good as KQJTx?

I agree with Phil that a ♣ is a long shot, with them having shown no major suit interest. Even if P has Kx, they're reasonably likely to be able to muster 9 tricks without letting me in, or 8 tricks to give me unpleasant discard problems.

I hate leading from 4-card suits, still worse Hxxx suits, and still worse when that H is the king. But I'm going to go with the major suit bias and slight implied ♥ weakness by W and try one here. Hitting QJxxx in P's hand isn't inconceivable (nor is AQx and a magic split), or maybe this will be one of those hands where setting up our 4-card suit is enough.

[MrAce]

Here is my 2 cents about the 2♥ response to a multi 2♦. I was raised (in terms of bridge) with multi. I played it all my life until I moved to flannery land.

Thinking that 2♥ response shows anything about ♥ or ♠ holding is very decisive,especially in expert forum.

J Qxx Jxxxx Qxxx

It has been long time since I played multi, but good players gave up on responding 2♠ with this type of hands long time ago. They respond 2♥. When you know your pd has a weak 2♠, there is no need for you to announce the entire world that you are in a misfit and that you have some heart values and length. Or if pd has hearts, it is even worse, to announce that you are short in spades AND you have a fit to your pd so that they can play the hand in 3 NT or 4♠ more accurately AND predict the singleton heart with their pd during the auction. You really need to avoid giving such info to opponents when pd opened weak and you are even more broke than him and hand belongs to opponents.

This is the downside of multi, when you have a fit in preempt suit, you can not put the max pressure on opponents immediately w/o leaking serious info. Otoh, 2♦ multi, with its own nature that looks like pandora's box, creates uncomfortable bidding for opps. Especially if responder don't naively tell tales to opponents.

There are a lot of other gimmicks that multi players use frequently. It is hard for non multi players or those who have not used it regularly for long years to get familiar with this concept by just knowing the basic mechanism of multi. I can write a hole book about how many different ways are there to confuse your opponents while using multi, if your opponents are not very experienced with playing against multi. Perhaps this should be alerted in USA since the majority of opponents will think exactly as Phil does. A European will more or less predict that this can be the hand 2♥ bidder can hold among a lot of other hands with short spades, while a very good player like Phil may immediately come to a conclusion that 2♥ bidder can not have short spades or may underestimate the variety of hands that will bid 2♥ with short spades.

Just like flannery, I know the basic rules of it and how the mechanism works. But I am sure while defending vs it or playing it, Phil will be aware of much more other things than I would.