[pclayton]

Spent the better part of the last 10 days driving around 4,000 miles. When I gave the wheel to someone else, I was able to re-read a few of my old books that were in storage.

Danny Roth's "Challenge Your Declarer Play" is a great book. This problem was partly inspired from one of the hands.

Your pard opens a weak 2♥. North doubles and raises South's Lebensohl 2N to 3N.

Scoring: IMP

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Pard leads the ♥Q. Dummy wins and puts the ♦J on the table.

[Echognome]

I duck. I want to try to make communication as difficult as possible for declarer. But this is my quick analysis of it.

[kenrexford]

We are playing for a set. Dummy has five tricks outside of diamonds. If Declarer has the K10xx in diamonds, ducking is fatal.

That said, covering ain't so good either, if that is the layout. Declarer will be able to pick up the suit one way or the other if he has that hand. So, I give him something else.

K-empty fourth is not interesting, either. If I duck, he picks up the suit no matter what. If I cover, he ends up in best case with the diamond 3 on dummy and two cards that beat my 6-5. So, he cannot have K-fourth.

What about K10x? Or, K109? In that case, he needs to guess diamonds right, and he probably will (and probably has already), so I ignore that as well.

An interesting possibility is a strange 108xx. This would be a very sexy line for Declarer. If he induces a cover from Qxxx or Kxxx, he can then pick up the suit. If his diamonds are 109xx, he can also pick up if I have Kx or Qx and duck. This could be a desperation play. These possibilities suggests a duck.

Another interesting possibility. Declarer with 10xx? He expects both of us to duck, and is sneaking one through? Possible...

[brianshark]

Playing small seems almost certainly right. It avoids crashing pard's potential ♦ honours and avoids having to find the lead to the next trick if/when the Q holds.

When does it cost? When declarer has the K but not the T? Why would he play it this way if so?

[kenrexford]

brianshark, on Aug 12 2008, 06:31 PM, said:

When declarer has the K but not the T? Why would he play it this way if so?

K9xx, playing for his LHO to have 10x. Something like that.

[pclayton]

kenrexford, on Aug 12 2008, 02:46 PM, said:

Another interesting possibility.  Declarer with 10xx?  He expects both of us to duck, and is sneaking one through?  Possible...

This is exactly the gist of the hand. With our spots, it really doesn't matter what we do if declarer has the King, unless declarer is taking a very strange chinese finesse holding Kxx.

We cannot expect partner to know to ever duck holding Kxx or Kxxx, since declarer could hold Qxxx / QTxx / QTxxx. The other possibility is that declarer holds Txxx, with or without the 9/8, however it seems right to enter his hand and play pard for Hx, so I think playing the Queen is clear. By the way, if our Queen holds, the ♠K looks obvious at this point, don't you think?

I've given a lot of thought to these positions with a very strong hand opposite a very weak hand where the entry position is awkward, or hard to read at the least. Here's a few others (dummy is North):

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Leading the King will frequently win a trick.

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Leading the Queen off the board is similar to the OP.

Wouldn't it be sinister for declarer to play the Jack holding:

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?

Surely there are many other cousins to these positions.

[kenrexford]

Nice post.

There do seem to be a lot of empathy plays like this available. To a minor degree, another was my solution for a slam hands years ago. With Qxx in dummy and A10 in hand, I needed to play this side suit, in a suit contract, for two tricks without giving up a trick. Splying to smother the Jack or drop the stiff King seemed stupid. So, I instead played a small card toward my hand, planning to hook if I saw no honor. As it was, RHO stuck in the Jack. I won, crossed to dummy, and sent another small one through his King, the 10 winning.

On another, with Qxxx in hand and 9xx on dummy, the cards went small-10-Q-K. Small-J-Q-K would be the same. After taking a false finesse to mislead the count for LHO, I then "tried to sneak the 9 past him for the 9th trick," crashing his Jack under his partner's Ace for the make.

Obscure little falsecard situations fascinate me.