[mikl_plkcc]

MP scoring

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Lead was ♠9. There are 6 top tricks, 1 slow ♦ trick, and 2-3 ♣ tricks after it is established, therefore I played it for 9-10 tricks.

I first raised with the A, played the ♣A, then a small ♣. The ♣Q immediately appeared on the East to take my ♣J down despite it is hidden in the closed hand. ♣ were proven to break 3-2, with only 1 left at that point which will be taken down by dummy's K.

East returned a ♠. I ducked. West returned another ♠ and forced my K out, and exposed ♠ were 3-3. Therefore dummy's ♠7 became established.

I then turned to ♦ as an attempt to drive the ♦K out in order to establish the ♦J. The ♦K appeared on the East.

East played a ♥J, I raised with an A immediately.

I then played a ♦J to dummy's Q as the only remaining entry, and the whole of dummy was established, with 10 tricks as the result.

I was shocked that I got 0 MP for this board. All 4 other tables took 11 tricks at 3NT. What did I do wrong here? How should I play this board in MP?

[Cyberyeti]

If you're going to waste the ace of spades, you have to lead a small club not the ace, but in practice you should play for clubs 3-2 win the K and play a club I think, although ducking the first spade is not bad either unless E overtakes.

[mikl_plkcc]

 Cyberyeti, on 2021-October-14, 16:25, said:

If you're going to waste the ace of spades, you have to lead a small club not the ace, but in practice you should play for clubs 3-2 win the K and play a club I think, although ducking the first spade is not bad either unless E overtakes.

If the clubs were 3-2, I was guaranteed 5 tricks in ♣. However, if the clubs were 4-1, what I was doing was to play the ♣A first to see if ♣Q will drop, then if not play a small ♣, hope that the J could become a trick if it was held by East (if the J was on West there would be no way I could take 5 tricks in ♣), such that I could take 5 tricks as well.

[sfi]

 mikl_plkcc, on 2021-October-14, 16:47, said:

If the clubs were 3-2, I was guaranteed 5 tricks in ♣. However, if the clubs were 4-1, what I was doing was to play the ♣A first to see if ♣Q will drop, then if not play a small ♣, hope that the J could become a trick if it was held by East (if the J was on West there would be no way I could take 5 tricks in ♣), such that I could take 5 tricks as well.

There are a bunch of things to consider on this hand, and it's mostly about entries.

How should you approach this hand? Start by counting potential tricks. If clubs break you have 2 spades, 1 heart, 1 diamond and 5 clubs. You can easily develop 1-2 more tricks in diamonds by taking the finesse. What are the risks? They might be able to set up and cash spades, they might be able to switch to a heart from East, cutting your communications, and clubs may break badly. At matchpoints it pays to try to get overtricks, so if we think optimistically we can hope for a good club break and the DK onside. Our target looks like it should be 11 tricks.

Once again the hand is all about entries. We need to get to the long clubs, finesse and unblock the diamonds, and avoid them cutting our communications. The best way to do that looks like winning the SA at trick one and doing one of two things - either ducking the club or taking an immediate diamond finesse. If you duck the club, they can knock out one of the entries to your hand (SK or HA), but not both, so you can still sort out the diamonds. If you finesse diamonds twice, you can then duck a club and hope to cash 5 tricks in the suit later. It's a good general idea to set up your long suit first, so a low club to the jack looks right. You then win the return in hand and hope both minors behave.

[Winstonm]

The fly in this ointment is the club jack. We would like to lead low toward it but our entries are screwy. With xx in clubs we would have to make the right play and win the lead in hand and duck a club - we sacrifice a small degree if safety in order to retain flexibility to take maximum tricks. So ignore the club jack and go from there.

[Cyberyeti]

 mikl_plkcc, on 2021-October-14, 16:47, said:

If the clubs were 3-2, I was guaranteed 5 tricks in ♣. However, if the clubs were 4-1, what I was doing was to play the ♣A first to see if ♣Q will drop, then if not play a small ♣, hope that the J could become a trick if it was held by East (if the J was on West there would be no way I could take 5 tricks in ♣), such that I could take 5 tricks as well.

You're not thinking, the Q drops singleton, the club suit is now dead as the 10 is a stop and you don't have the 2 more dummy entries you need. If you played small and the stiff Q goes in from E he has to return a diamond rather than a heart to prevent you enjoying the clubs.

[EricK]

Maybe other players had different bidding and got a different lead. Imagine a sequence like 1NT 2C 2H 3NT. Now you are likely to get a D lead, and will likely make 5C 3D 2S 1H or something like that.