[akwoo]

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(Spots approximate)

You lead the A♦; partner discourages. You switch to the 8♠, to the J and A. Declarer cashes the K♣, then leads a club to the A, dropping your QT doubleton, partner playing bottom up. Now declarer leads a heart to the K and you take your A. Do you cash your K♦ or not?

[mike777]

I will give it a try.

Yes.

Why?

I give North more than 14.
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Unfortunately this sort of reminds me of a hand from yesterday

Defending 4 Clubs, I paused deep in thought
Do I cash out or try and beat this.
Amazingly I came up with a third option
Which allowed declarer to make an overtrick.

[shyams]

I must be missing something.

Every "solution" I can think of works equally well OR better if East refused to take the ♥A at trick 5.

1. Perhaps North misguessed and played the ♥K from ♥KJ10x (instead of what I think North holds i.e. ♠A10x ♥KQ10x ♦Qxxx ♣Kx). OR
2. Maybe partner was forced to discourage at trick 1 due to a holding of ♦Q7. (i.e. North holds ♠A10x ♥KQJx ♦109xx ♣Kx).

[akwoo]

Without saying what works on the actual layout of the cards, I think both of you are right. Matchpoints is hard. (I was declarer by the way, but LHO who went into the tank with this problem is generally speaking a better player than I.)

[WasWinM]

This may be dumb as I don’t know your signals but why not continue a low diamond at trick 2? You said partner discouraged but what his count?

[mikeh]

WasWinM, on 2025-May-01, 17:50, said:

This may be dumb as I don’t know your signals but why not continue a low diamond at trick 2? You said partner discouraged but what his count?

If one gives attitude, one cannot simultaneously give count, and vice versa.

Now, should partner be giving attitude? I wouldn’t and I think that, in NA, it’s fairly common to play that the lead of the ace seeks attitude and of the king seeks count or unblock. I have no idea why I led a top diamond….I’d have led a boring 4th best.

The diamond Ace, seeking attitude, is the lead one would make from holdings such as AKx. Meanwhile, wtf is partner supposed to play with Qx at trick one? Or Jxxx for that matter…is he supposed to encourage when declarer might hold Q10xx?

Now, on some hands a low diamond is expensive, but our heart ace affords us a small degree of protection.

Btw, west can help us out a little, even after our start, by the order in which he plays his clubs. If he has the spade Queen, he plays high low in clubs…count is known to be irrelevant so his club cards are suit preference, focusing on spades, since he’s already given attitude in diamonds. Plus he should give count in hearts. Knowing the heart count (with some degree of uncertainty) and the spade situation, we’d be better informed than we are as readers. Yes, MPs is hard, but defending as if playing solitaire makes it a lot harder than it needs to be be.

[akwoo]

mikeh, on 2025-May-01, 23:47, said:

If one gives attitude, one cannot simultaneously give count, and vice versa.

Now, should partner be giving attitude? I wouldn’t and I think that, in NA, it’s fairly common to play that the lead of the ace seeks attitude and of the king seeks count or unblock. I have no idea why I led a top diamond….I’d have led a boring 4th best.

The diamond Ace, seeking attitude, is the lead one would make from holdings such as AKx. Meanwhile, wtf is partner supposed to play with Qx at trick one? Or Jxxx for that matter…is he supposed to encourage when declarer might hold Q10xx?

Now, on some hands a low diamond is expensive, but our heart ace affords us a small degree of protection.

Btw, west can help us out a little, even after our start, by the order in which he plays his clubs. If he has the spade Queen, he plays high low in clubs…count is known to be irrelevant so his club cards are suit preference, focusing on spades, since he’s already given attitude in diamonds. Plus he should give count in hearts. Knowing the heart count (with some degree of uncertainty) and the spade situation, we’d be better informed than we are as readers. Yes, MPs is hard, but defending as if playing solitaire makes it a lot harder than it needs to be be.

Context: East is one of the 10 best players in the 1600 miles between Seattle suburbs and Minneapolis suburbs. When 4 of them team up for a Swiss at a Sectional they score 110 out of 120 VPs. I (declaring as North) might be one of them but probably not. West is the third best player within 80 miles.

There aren't 10 players between Seattle suburbs and Minneapolis suburbs that would know to signal suit preference on the clubs(or equivalently here use club attitude as a proxy for spade attitude). East gets to play with one of them maybe 5 sessions a year.

As for the high diamond lead - I've been known to bluff that 3N bid a fair amount (and outright psych it at the given colors sometimes too). I don't know if that justifies the lead. East/West always lead A from AK (maybe except for AK doubleton and above the 5 level).

West played low on the heart, standard count. Can't be trusted.

East isn't defending completely solitaire, but definitely with less information than if he were playing with someone at his level. You have the information he has.

(Sorry - mikeh - if the problem of defending with an inferior partner isn't an interesting problem to you. For the rest of us, we face this problem frequently.)

[shyams]

So what's the correct or preferred line of play? Did East find it at the table?

[akwoo]

shyams, on 2025-May-02, 10:58, said:

So what's the correct or preferred line of play? Did East find it at the table?

Spoiler

Declarer has 4 hearts, so it boils down to whether declarer has the J♥ - you need to cash the K♦ if he does and lead a spade if he doesn't.

In many fields (including this one), there is an additional MP-odds calculation - you're already losing the board if declarer doesn't have J♥ (and probably also Q♠). Most N/S pairs won't be getting to game with 14 hcps opposite 9, so -400 and -430 are the same score, whereas, if declarer does have J♥, there might be a difference between -430 and -460.

As it turns out, East did cash, and I did not have the J♥.

[mikeh]

akwoo, on 2025-May-02, 10:23, said:

Context: East is one of the 10 best players in the 1600 miles between Seattle suburbs and Minneapolis suburbs. When 4 of them team up for a Swiss at a Sectional they score 110 out of 120 VPs. I (declaring as North) might be one of them but probably not. West is the third best player within 80 miles.

There aren't 10 players between Seattle suburbs and Minneapolis suburbs that would know to signal suit preference on the clubs(or equivalently here use club attitude as a proxy for spade attitude). East gets to play with one of them maybe 5 sessions a year.

As for the high diamond lead - I've been known to bluff that 3N bid a fair amount (and outright psych it at the given colors sometimes too). I don't know if that justifies the lead. East/West always lead A from AK (maybe except for AK doubleton and above the 5 level).

West played low on the heart, standard count. Can't be trusted.

East isn't defending completely solitaire, but definitely with less information than if he were playing with someone at his level. You have the information he has.

(Sorry - mikeh - if the problem of defending with an inferior partner isn't an interesting problem to you. For the rest of us, we face this problem frequently.)

Hey, I occasionally play with players who would simply look blank if I tried to suggest ways for west to help. I posted as I did only to let interested players know how it is possible for defence to be a collaborative effort. For every (rare) tough play problem I get right as declarer or every complex but accurate auction to a great contract we have, to me the absolute best experience in any match or session is when my partner and I collaborate to come up with a perfect defence, knowing what we were doing. Happens very rarely but it’s a thrill when it does.

So I do understand that most players are going to face what are basically pure guesses. I don’t find that sort of thing interesting. There’s no real analysis going on, as far as I can tell. If we don’t cash our diamond, declarer may take the rest of the tricks. If we do, we may have allowed an unmakeable contract to come home.

Anyone can flip a coin…I don’t find it particularly interesting or informative to find out that I’ve guessed ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It’s not as if finding out the result from either guess s going to help me next time I’m in this sort of situation.

Now, I may have missed some inference, either because I wasn’t ’at the table’ (never forget that being at the table entitles you to be aware of how declarer is playing….against a good declarer, you wouldn’t usually pick up any useful information but lesser players sometimes leak information via tempo or line of play…of course one has to do ignore..or go against…any information leaked by partner…or because I simply didn’t think of it. Otherwise this is just guessing when, ideally, one should have a lot more information (which may well leave you guessing anyway,but with an increased chance of doing the right thing).

[mikeh]

akwoo, on 2025-May-02, 12:20, said:

Spoiler

Declarer has 4 hearts, so it boils down to whether declarer has the J♥ - you need to cash the K♦ if he does and lead a spade if he doesn't.

In many fields (including this one), there is an additional MP-odds calculation - you're already losing the board if declarer doesn't have J♥ (and probably also Q♠). Most N/S pairs won't be getting to game with 14 hcps opposite 9, so -400 and -430 are the same score, whereas, if declarer does have J♥, there might be a difference between -430 and -460.

As it turns out, East did cash, and I did not have the J♥.

Why would you defend on the basis that other tables may miss game? I really don’t like the 3C opening. I have no issue with a six card suit…my issue is that this is a terrible hand for a white v red 1st seat 3C because it has too much defence and, a corollary, too many hcp. On many hands on which north bids 3N opposite 3C, he’ll open 1N, if strong, or 1suit and then show the strong hand, if playing weak notrump. I really don’t see why it’s correct to infer that most pairs won’t reach 3N. South will drive to game opposite a strong notrump hand

Why can’t North hold AQ10 KQxx Qxxx Kx? 10 tricks where it doesn’t matter what you do (surely nobody plays a low diamond, lol). AQ10 KQJx Q10xx Kx. 11 tricks if you don’t cash. A10xx KQxx Q10x Kx. And so on. Also, given that you’ve said that partner isn’t giving you any help, what makes you think declarer has 4 hearts? AQ10x KQ10 Qxxx Kx.

One point with which agree defender should be concerned is ‘if’ North lacks a 15+ hand, game may be missed at some/most tables.But, having considered this, it is easy to dismiss it as a factor. The one thing we can be pretty sure about is that we can’t beat 3N, so concluding that we’re doomed for a bad score is very much a defeatist attitude. If we could beat 3N, on constructions wherein 3N won’t usually be reached, then we have a really interesting matchpoint problem…at imps it would be easy….go all out to beat a beatable contract even if, by doing so, we leak an overtrick or two when declarer doesn’t have the hand for which we were playing. At MPs, otoh, we’re flirting with top-bottom bridge.