[Dinarius]

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You are in 6♥.

West leads Q♦

You draw trumps in two and ruff a ♦

So, you have 11 tricks.

What is the best way to play the ♣ suit to guarantee the second ♣ trick that you need?

Finesse? Or A♣ and return to hand and play towards Q♣?

Thanks.

D.

[FelicityR]

I would do an elimination in ♦s and ♠s before committing to the ♣suit. My philosophy here is simple: If you finesse ♣s immediately you only see one card from an opponent; if you cash the ♣A and then come back to hand to hand to lead towards the ♣Q you will see three cards from the opponents before you have to make a decision.

[masse24]

Low from hand toward dummy, intending to duck if west plays low. Otherwise, if west covers your 5 or 7, you cover as cheaply as possible.

[nige1]

Dinarius asks 'You are in 6♥.West leads Q♦. You draw trumps in two and ruff a ♦, So, you have 11 tricks.What is the best way to play the ♣ suit to guarantee the second ♣ trick that you need?
1. Finesse? Or
2. A♣ and return to hand and play towards Q♣?'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Line 1 makes an overtrick when LHO has doubleton ♣KJ.
Line 2 gains when RHO has singleton ♣K.

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[johnu]

nige1, on 2019-November-20, 14:19, said:

Dinarius asks 'You are in 6♥.West leads Q♦. You draw trumps in two and ruff a ♦, So, you have 11 tricks.What is the best way to play the ♣ suit to guarantee the second ♣ trick that you need?
1. Finesse? Or
2. A♣ and return to hand and play towards Q♣?'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Line 2 gains when RHO has singleton ♣K.

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Line 2 also gains when RHO has ♣KJ and when LHO has ♣Jx (J9 is also handled by line 1)

[smerriman]

johnu, on 2019-November-20, 15:04, said:

Line 2 also gains when RHO has ♣KJ and when LHO has ♣Jx (J9 is also handled by line 1)

Doesn't line 1 work in both those cases? If you finesse first, the jack drops under the ace at trick 2.

But masse24's line looks very promising.

Edit - I think I see what you mean; you were comparing to that line, not the same line as nige1 (was confused by your quote about singleton K, which both these lines pick up).

So you're right, A then leading towards the Q loses to J9x, but gains for Jx and 9xx, so is better than the triple finesse after all.

[steve2005]

johnu, on 2019-November-20, 15:04, said:

Line 2 also gains when RHO has ♣KJ and when LHO has ♣Jx (J9 is also handled by line 1)

Line 2 is better. whenever line 1 would work line 2 works and it has other hands where only line 2 works.

[pescetom]

Does anyone have percentages for lines 1, 2 and 3(=Masse24) ?

[Stephen Tu]

Line 2 is clearly better than line 1. Picking up stiff K offside. 69.22%
Line 2 is better than line 3 (deep finesse). Basically line 3 > line 2 if J9x onside. But line 2 > line 3 if K9x offside or KJ offside. So net worse by the KJ offside combination, 3.39% worse.

Deep finesse would be better at MP if one felt that a very large percentage of the field would find 6 (since you can take all the tricks more often), but I think that is clearly not the case on this pair of hands, so I would try to just make 6.