[DavidKok]

Playing rubber bridge with an inexperienced, smart and rapidly improving partner you decide to make a questionable balancing decision over a weak 2. Partner swiftly raises, and it's clear there is some work to do in this contract.

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West leads the ♦6, 1st/3rd/5th. You are somewhat familiar with West's style: with the spade suit missing this many honours, and vulnerable, the opening is guaranteed to be at least six cards (and seven is highly unlikely). This is further reinforced by East's lack of a raise.

• What do you think of the auction?
  
• Plan the play.

[jillybean]

1. I'd have the same auction

2. I suck at this

LHO has KJ spades, club values or !h ace

I have 2 club losers, 1or2 heart, 1 spade.
The diamond suit is tricky, I have to preserve an entry to dummy.

Can I win diamond, lead spade a A Ten
lead low heart

(it's 5am I'll finish this later)

[mw64ahw]

The balancing looks Ok, but then partner is guessing with limit raise values. Personally I Pass.

I'll play the 4♦ and a low ♣ back

[hrothgar]

Perhaps there is some miraculous line that will allow the contract to make

In practice, I want t minimize undertricks / Daimond ruffs.

I'm going to win the Diamond in hand, lead a spade to the Ace follow by a heart to the King and the 10 of Hearts

[mycroft]

Not sure about the play, but rubber makes this interesting. The "downside" of 3-making-4 is a 90 leg and 30 above the line; bidding and making it ends the 500 rubber; but bidding and going down is 100 away *and* the loss of the 90 leg. Which, if the next hand is a partscore fight, is a "you partscore; me game" fight. Which can be very lucrative, depending on the cards and how reluctant the opponents are to let go of the rubber.

If it's 4-deal Chicago with rubber scoring, like TGR plays, it doesn't matter, because this is the fourth hand and the leg will just get paid out like duplicate. But in real rubber bridge, it's a distinct and unique question.

I don't actually play rubber bridge - if 1% of players searching the almighty masterpoint are less-than-ethical, I fear how many more are when it's actual pesos - so maybe it's not as interesting as I make out. But it's something to think about anyway.

[DavidKok]

It was closer to real rubber, partscores do carry over and the likes. Both sides were vulnerable because both sides had previously bid and made a game. However, we had some custom rules that had further knock-on effects on the decisionmaking. We also did not play for money, only for fun and bragging rights. At any rate some of this was going through my head when balancing, but I think North's raise is pretty clear at any form of scoring.

I agree that 'comfortably' playing this in 3♥ would have been pleasant, giving us the 90 leg for the next board.

[DavidKok]

I was hoping for a little more discussion here. We indeed have three unavoidable losers - two in clubs and one in hearts. But there's a bunch of good news too. The auction has pointed to the likely location of the spade honours, and vacant spaces told us a bunch about probable distributions of side suits. The lead is also informative.

[DavidKok]

As most play discussions do this one died a swift death. I'll just give my answer.

I want to make. Two unavoidable club losers and one such heart loser mean I can't lose anything else. I place ♠KJ-sixth with West, so I will have to either establish both diamonds and clubs to pitch two spades, or throw West in with a club to lead away from the spades. The lead is suspect - possibly short, which helps inform the decision on how to play the heart suit.
At the table I played the ♦8, and to my shock East played the ♦7! In hindsight I should have overtaken with the ace, but at the table I played low from hand, then ♥Q pinning West's singleton ♥J. East ducked the ace but had no defence - I continued hearts and East won the third round and returned a heart as East pitched spades and I pitched a club in dummy. I could now pitch a club on the diamonds, and play the spades up to dummy's AT to establish a spade trick. Two spades, four hearts and four diamonds makes 10 tricks total.
What I found intriguing on this deal is that East has no defence, and in fact the contract is cold after the lead (but defeated on a club lead only). When in with the ♥A East can play on clubs and cash two tricks, but this establishes dummy's ♣J and allows me to pitch both spades in hand. A spade return would have been best, but I can carefully let it run to dummy, play a diamond to the ace, draw the last trump, and overtake the ♦Q with the ♦K to get back on the table. This is why I should have overtaken the diamond trick one, catering to West having ♦J96x.

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A fun and instructive hand about giving a defender a problem without a solution.