[manudude03]

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West leads the ♠A and switches to the ♣7. East tries to cash KA, but you ruff at trick 3. Plainly the contract depends on playing the hearts without loss. Plan the play (Int+ hide answers).

edit: This was played against the gibs, so 5 card majors, and lead low from 3 otherwise 4th best.

[Cyberyeti]

What signals do the opps use, and what do they tell me ? 4 or 5 card majors ?

Spoiler

I'm going to play a diamond to dummy and if all follow ruff a club high then repeat that process to work out how the clubs break, draw the remaining trump if any then assume spades are 5-5 if they're playing 5M and count the hand accordingly

[manudude03]

It was probably too open ended for this forum, but Cyberyeti's line is correct. Crossing over to dummy to ruff the clubs on this occasion revealed that East had 5 clubs (West showed out on the 4th club), trumps were also 2-2. Therefore East must have been either 5125 or less likely 6025. If he is 6025, you can't pick up QJxx with West so you will always be -1. However, when he is 5125, your only chance is that East had a singleton honour, and that was how it turned out to be. Making this was worth 9.8 imps.

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[BillPatch]

manudude03, on 2015-August-23, 06:06, said:

It was probably too open ended for this forum,...

Presumably a well written intentional understatement. An ordinary intermediate might find a winning play after dropping a quack by recognizing the application of the rule of restricted choice. Only a better intermediate is likely to find the counting play.