[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.