[inquiry]

You don't mind opening light, especially in third seat, but this time, you simply passed this hand. Click NEXT to see the cards played to the first lot of tricks.

Partner starts with a 4th best spade and ducks the first club giving count (UDCA), you clear spades, and partner gets in on the third round of clubs to cash a couple rounds of spades. You discard a high heart spot to discourage a heart switch on the third club, and then play your last two spades up the line to further encourage diamond and discourage heart. Partner switches to the diamond NINE, covered by JACK your queen and declarer wins the ACE.

You are down to five cards, seems like nothing can wrong now. What do you discard on the ♣Ten and what do you play if declarer leads a small diamond or small heart from dummy?

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[MrAce]

Spoiler

I will not spoil this and will pm u Ben, good hand

[han]

I think the hands are coming too quickly. Perhaps this is the reason there are almost no B/I players reacting at this point. Two hands per week would be a good rate for me. (Could it be that I am not spending enough time reading BBF?)

[inquiry]

han, on 2011-September-09, 05:57, said:

I think the hands are coming too quickly. Perhaps this is the reason there are almost no B/I players reacting at this point. Two hands per week would be a good rate for me. (Could it be that I am not spending enough time reading BBF?)

I can certainly slow to two a week, but I don't control when BunnyGo post his or if someone else wants to join the theme and post their own defensive hands. I had only planned about five a week anyway. I don't post the solutions too quickly. Sometimes I forget to post the solution at all (especially if the solution is given clearly by one of the responders).

Question for others, .... how many a week seems about right to you?

[MrAce]

inquiry, on 2011-September-09, 11:49, said:

I can certainly slow to two a week, but I don't control when BunnyGo post his or if someone else wants to join the theme and post their own defensive hands. I had only planned about five a week anyway. I don't post the solutions too quickly. Sometimes I forget to post the solution at all (especially if the solution is given clearly by one of the responders).

Question for others, .... how many a week seems about right to you?

I think 2 or 3 per week is good. I like it 1 per day, but then it is kinda hard to follow the replies and when we go thru it too fast, it doesn't meet its purpose which is to be educational for B/I players, especially considering some of those hands are already a bit loaded for them. Thats just my opinion though.

[inquiry]

SOLUTION TO DEFENSIVE PLAY SIXTEEN
MrAce in fact did private message me with the correct response to this problem. This problem has an interesting play you need to find on one line with a funny name: crocodile coup (also sometimes known as an alligator coup). The hand should be totally double dummy at this point (if you are going to set it). You should be able to work out who has:
The heart ACE
The heart KING
The heart QUEEN
The heart JACK
The diamond Eight
How many hearts South started with
How many diamonds South started with

When you can do that, you should be able to construct the ending and find the correct play(s). If you haven't been able to work out the answers to the above questions, don't read the solution but think on the hand a little longer.

Spoiler

Declarer has a strong hand. We have seen 14 hcp from his hand (♠AK, ♦A, ♣A) and he has not more hcp in those suits. His announced range is 22-24. So he will have at least eight HCP in hearts. His distribution seems clear as well. He had 3♠, and 4♣ and he didn't discard a heart honor. To get to 8 hcp in hearts he has to have three heart honors (AKJ or AKQ). If he has AKQ of hearts, he will 8 tricks. The four he has already won, the club he has to cash, and three hearts. In addition, it looks like partner has something in hearts. It is not 100% clear, but partner could have lead the ♠9 then the ♠J to deny stuff in hearts.

So the ending at this point is clear and should be "double dummy" (if partner does not have ♦8 in this ending, declarer would have lead the ♦8 now and use club an entry to established ♦J for 8 tricks) when declarer lead his last club and partner discards a low diamond.

After your red suit discard, most declarers will lead a heart from dummy in this ending and lose to partner's queen, and you will score your diamond King for down one. However, occasionally you run into a declarer who will get this ending right. If you discard a "useless heart", he plays a heart to his ACE, and exit a small diamond and he will DUCKS partner's ♦8 in dummy. This will cause either you or your partner to be endplayed. If your partner is allowed to hold the ♦8 he has to lead from his ♥Qx into declarer's KJ getting an eighth trick. If you overtake the ♦K, you will have to lead from ♦74 back to dummy's ♦J6 (both declarer and partner will be out of diamonds). It is vitally important that you keep the low heart so you can overtake partner's ♦8 and exit safely with a heart.

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Even if you correctly discard a diamond, declarer might hit upon the lead of a low diamond from dummy. Now you have to play a crocodile coup and go up with the ♦K, because if you play low, partner will be forced to win the ♦8 and have to lead from ♥Qxx into declarer's ♥AKJ. Partner could have discarded his ♦8 instead of low and saved you all the problems.

The full hand was:

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[MrAce]

For some reason i cant see the hands in your spoiler Ben, is it only me or others too ?

[inquiry]

MrAce, on 2011-September-12, 14:40, said:

For some reason i cant see the hands in your spoiler Ben, is it only me or others too ?

I just tested it on my PC using IE 9.02, chrome something, and Firefox 6.0.

I can see the hands with both chrome and firefox, but not IE. Strange. I will see if I edit the file in Internet explorer it will fix the problem.<br><br>That didn't work. I am thinking I will have to pull the diagrams out of the spoiler, unless someone else knows a fix. I will give it some time to see if the tech kind of guys know what to do about this.&nbsp; Of course, you know the hands as you messaged me exactly what they were but thanks for the heads up on the problem. I use Firefox for the forum because since upgrading to IE 9, a lot of stuff seems broken (private messaging for one) with IE. <br>

[vuroth]

han, on 2011-September-09, 05:57, said:

I think the hands are coming too quickly. Perhaps this is the reason there are almost no B/I players reacting at this point. Two hands per week would be a good rate for me. (Could it be that I am not spending enough time reading BBF?)

I'm only just getting to look at this now.