From                   5th December, 2007, Board 8

                                          Difficulty            * * * 

                                          Dlr West             None Vul

South’s 2♠ was Michaels, showing Hearts and a minor.

Partner leads the Heart Three (3^rd and 5^th), Dummy plays low and your King wins, Declarer playing the Seven.

From the opening lead it seems clear that Partner has the J♥ or Q♥ (but not both), and that Declarer can arrange for a fast pitch when he gets in.

SOLUTION

The first question is “Which is Partner’s minor?”  With your hand and Dummy containing a combined 7 cards in each minor it’s far from clear.  Depending on which minor Partner holds, Declarer’s most likely distributions are 6-2-4-1 and 6-2-1-4.  In either case you’ll want to return Declarer’s singleton suit to Partner’s hoped-for Ace before that singleton goes on the third round of Hearts.

Are there any clues from the bidding?  Declarer accepted his Partner’s game invitation, which of these two hands is more likely?

            ♠ AJxxxx, ♥ Qx, ♦ ATxx, ♣ x

            ♠ AJxxxx, ♥ Qx, ♦ x, ♣ AQJx

The first hand is a marginal acceptance, whereas the second hand is clear-cut.  Because of the missing ♣QJ, we’d say that there are more accepting hands which are 6-2-1-4 than there are for the 6-2-4-1 hands.  For that reason, we’d shift to a Diamond at Trick Two.

A Diamond shift may be more likely to succeed, but it could also be doubly disastrous if it’s wrong, not only failing to cash the right minor Ace but also blowing a trick in Diamonds (if Declarer has ATxx).

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