[H_KARLUK]

Scoring: MP

♦10 led. Let's see your best to bring home this nice 6NT.

---

Good luck ♥

[jikl]

Why are we looking at a ♥ suit safety play with the back up plan of a red suit squeeze?

Sean

[gwnn]

because it's the bil forum?

[vuroth]

So from the above, the percentage play is A♥, low to Q♥, and if that loses, hope hearts are 3-3, or one opponents gets squeezed in ♥/♦?

[Trumpace]

Is there really a squeeze? Best defence can break it up it seems.

[inquiry]

Trumpace, on Dec 22 2008, 09:18 PM, said:

Is there really a squeeze? Best defence can break it up it seems.

There could be a squeeze, if East has doubleton heart king and doubleton diamond. He will not be able to duck the second heart, obviously, and the squeeze is automatic.... Not all that likely, of course, but you never know.

[FrancesHinden]

vuroth, on Dec 22 2008, 11:25 PM, said:

So from the above, the percentage play is A♥, low to Q♥, and if that loses, hope hearts are 3-3, or one opponents gets squeezed in ♥/♦?

That's an interesting question. The diamond lead has caused us a lot of grief.

Ace of hearts followed by a heart to the queen will go off in practice if RHO has Kxxx of hearts, because he will duck the second round.

If only they hadn't led a diamond but instead a club, say, we could win the lead and play a heart to the queen (winning), cross back to hand in a black suit and play a heart towards the jack. That will lose, or else we have 12 tricks. We win the diamond return (say) in dummy, cash the ace of hearts and discover that RHO started with K10xx hearts. Now we can run our black suit winners and come down to this position, with the lead in dummy:

A
5
2
-


5
-
K3
-

if RHO also started with an original 6 diamonds to go with his four hearts, he is squeezed in the red suits.

However, as others have pointed out, we can no longer do this on a diamond lead. This line also gives up on singleton king of hearts.

So we are back to ace of hearts and a heart towards dummy, hoping for 3 heart tricks.

What we must not do is take the heart finesse (run the queen of hearts from dummy).

[vuroth]

I think I see. Squeezes aren't my strong point, but we won't be able to squeeze the reds if opponents lead diamonds TWICE. (If they err and return us a black suit, we're still afloat.)

Now Trumpace's comment makes sense. Thanks.

V