Another 5 clubs

jillybean, on 2025-August-05, 08:46, said:

Lead was ♠Ace followed by a shift to ♥J

I find it hard to envision EW hands where West would bid only 2♠... to be at all plausible East must have at least 6.
♥J is odd too, assuming it can not come from QJ: we can see T987.
It looks possible this is from Jx, in any case with ♥Q in West.
I would take with ♥K, pull out the trumps (probably 3 in West) and then tackle hearts finessing for Q in West and see what happens.
If as I imagine the Q resists, I tackle the diamonds playing for J in East.
Sooner or later I have to concede the ♦A, probably in East with a spades return consuming my last trump in dummy, but I can still ruff a 4th red card in hand if necessary.

Am I already way off the rails?

jillybean, on 2025-August-06, 10:56, said:

It appears that I should stop posting play problems.

I think part of the problem, and definitely a reason I didn’t post, is that, imo, a good play problem should not entail trying to assess the competency of the opps. I say that knowing very well that in real life it is often appropriate to consider that factor. However, in real life (especially but not solely in FTF bridge) one almost always has some idea of the skill level. I think I can often get at least an approximate idea of an opp’s level by the end of a single hand, and sometimes earlier.

Also, good players usually (always in my experience) have an agreement about carding at trick one when partner is winning the trick and there is a singleton in dummy. Here, I’d expect most wests to play a low spade, suggesting a diamond shift.

That influences my assessment. Why would east switch to the heart J if west suggested a diamond? It’s almost surely not a singleton since partner has denied the heart ace. Whether I’d get this right is speculation since I’ve seen the hand but a shift from Jx is bizarre and, as stated above, a shift to the stiff Jack is just as strange…..if west was able to and did signal for diamonds. Inexperienced players might not know of this method, so against very weak defenders I might decide that east was hoping his partner held AQxx (so switch from Jx) or Axx(x)(x) (so switch from a stiff).

A good play problem is usually looking for a technique-based answer. See cyber’s recent 5C problem where, with only one chance to lead the suit from dummy, one has to play xxx opposite KJ1098xx…..the clearly correct technical play….that doesn’t in any way rely upon an assessment of the opps…is to pop the King.

This problem otoh, suffers from incomplete information that a declarer would have (west’s play at trick one and whether, since declarer can and should ask) that card carried any information about what suit to play at trick 2.

So it’s not possible to provide a technique-based answer. To get this right one needs to assess the opps, and knowing their methods…including knowing that they have no methods at trick one….is essential for a play problem that is basically a guess as to what east is doing.