[Fluffy]

♠A642
♥KJ7
♦K
♣AK1063


♠J10985
♥63
♦Q764
♣75


( 1 ♥ )- X -( 2 ♥ )-pass
(pass)-3♣-(pass)-3♠
(pass)-4♠-all pass


lead is ♣4, plan the play.

[Phil]

I win the A. What spot does RHO and what are their agreements?

I'll continue with the ♦K.

[jmcw]

I must hold my ♥ and ♠ losers to 1 each.
I'm playing for ♠ to be 2/2 or 3/1 stiff honor, and then guess ♥ correctly.

Win the ♣, play the K♦ and follow with A♠ and a ♠ ASAP.
If I have to make an early decision in ♥ I play the op who does not have the A♦ for ♥A.

[gnasher]

It does depend a bit on what the club layout looks like, but probably:

Win and play ♦K. Win the club continuation and cash ♠A. Then:
- If no honour appears, play another spade, finding them 2-2. If they play back a diamond, try to set clubs up, then if that doesn;t work guess the hearts. If they play a heart through dummy earlier, we have to guess the hearts immediately. It's not much of a guess anyway - the bidding and lead make LHO very likely to have ♥A.
- If a spade honour appears, ruff a club before playing another trump - that saves us a heart guess if LHO is something like 1543.

If they play back a diamond at trick three, they're too good for me.

[whereagles]

I don't think I can make this if clubs break 5-1 (LHO will probably be 3541 then), so I'll have to assume LHO has 2 or 3 of those. In that context I can afford to play ace and another spade at this point, so I'll do that.

[jdeegan]

I am going to need three things:

1. to hold trump losers to one. Possibilities are 2-2, 3-1 or 1-3 with stiff honor or KQx(x) on my left.
2. to guess the ♥ suit - my initial inclination is that the ♥ ace is to my left since they didn't lead ♥, and LHO opened the bidding.
3. to find a tenth trick - either two ♦ ruffs in dummy OR set up a fifth round ♣ winner OR find both ♥ onside OR find both ♣ onside OR a squeeze.

How best to combine chances? Obviously, start by winning the ♣ noting RHO's spot card (giving up the ♣QJ onside except for the squeeze possibility), and playing the ♦ king. I don't have the mental capacity to enumerate all the possibilities from here, so I would just take it a trick at a time.

2-2 trumps and the ♥ ace onside appear to be my best possiblity at this stage, and I am not going to do anything to eliminate that play for the contract. I also fancy setting up the fifth ♣.

[Fluffy]

RHO plays lowest club spot, udca.

the only way to make this contract was making 2 heart tricks. LHO was indeed 3541, playing a diamond early gets dummy tapped and you lose a diamond before you cn discard on hearts for lack of comunication.