[carl3]

E:A962/9732/-/AQJ86 W:J543/AK54/J642/K East played 4h-1 and S led dA at both tables.
A bit strange since there is a good line. But maybe it is not all that easy to spot it?

[paulg]

(reformatted for you) Lead is the ♦A

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[AL78]

A standout line (and therefore likely wrong) is to go for a 3-2 heart break. Ruff opening lead, cash ♥AK, ♣K, ♠A, run clubs throwing spades. Defender with master trump can ruff in when they want but as long as the clubs don't break 6-1 or 7-0 you can discard enough spade losers to prevent then cashing enough spades to get you down. You make three hearts, four clubs, spade ace, two diamond ruffs.

An alternative line is to go for a spade diamond cross ruff. Ruff opening lead, cash clubs off the top throwing spades. If they break 4-3 defender ruffs in when the third spade is thrown. Win the return (likely a trump) try and cross-ruff as much as possible. That looks like it needs too much in my favour so I would likely go for the first line although that might fail if hearts are 4-1 (I'm not sure).

[carl3]

Thx for making the hands more readable. I ruff the lead and play hAK cK as you do. But then I ruff another d and discard d:s not sp on the c.This will actually give an övertrick since S had cT9.Very good players at this table but it was in the end of the last segment and they were probably tired. They tried some kind of cross ruff scenario that failed. Maybe the a to get rid of the d-losers is not all that easy to see.

[lamford]

AL78, on 2023-November-18, 02:58, said:

A standout line (and therefore likely wrong) is to go for a 3-2 heart break. Ruff opening lead, cash ♥AK, ♣K, ♠A, run clubs throwing spades. Defender with master trump can ruff in when they want but as long as the clubs don't break 6-1 or 7-0 you can discard enough spade losers to prevent then cashing enough spades to get you down. You make three hearts, four clubs, spade ace, two diamond ruffs.

An alternative line is to go for a spade diamond cross ruff. Ruff opening lead, cash clubs off the top throwing spades. If they break 4-3 defender ruffs in when the third spade is thrown. Win the return (likely a trump) try and cross-ruff as much as possible. That looks like it needs too much in my favour so I would likely go for the first line although that might fail if hearts are 4-1 (I'm not sure).

I like your first line.