AKJT98 opposite 32

Your trump suit is AKJT98 opposite 32 in the dummy. You need to make all tricks. How will you play?

In isolation, the percentage play is to take two finesses (without cashing A or K first). This caters to Q four cards with RHO which is higher percentage than 4 small cards with RHO.


If it were AKJT9 opposite xxx, then the correct play is to cash an honour first and then take the finesses. This allows you to also cater to singleton Q offside.

Now consider the following hand:

IMPS None	Dummy ♠ 32 ♥ KJ87 ♦ AJ ♣ KQJT9
	You ♠ AKJT98 ♥ 65 ♦ KQ2 ♣ A2

You are in 6S. Yes bidding maybe relevant but assume it is forgotten and all we remember is that opps never bid.

LHO leads the H2 (3rd or 4th best), you put in the J and RHO wins the A and shifts to a small spade.



How will you play?






You need to bring the trump suit in with no losers. If we looked at the suit in isolation, we would just take two finesses.

Could we potentially cater to a singleton Q with LHO without losing the option of picking up Qxxx with RHO?


Suppose we did the following (You can follow this play more easily on BBO handviewer):

Go up with the SA (assume LHO follows low spade).

Play heart to K and take the spade finesse. Assume LHO shows out. So RHO started with Qxxx of spades.

Now we need a trump coup against RHO to pick up the Q and for that we need two ruffs in hand and then end up in dummy to play through RHO.

Since RHO could potentially have doubleton club and throw that on the last heart:

Now play CA, CK and ruff a heart (we expect RHO to follow).

Diamond to the J and ruff another heart (RHO may or may not follow).

Now a diamond to dummy and play the good clubs through RHO (discard diamond if not ruffed).

This line will go down if RHO has Qxxx and either has a singleton/void club or a 3 card heart and doubleton diamond and they throw a diamond on the 4th heart. The second case is probably unlikely as that would give RHO a 4-3-2-4 hand and LHO with a singleton club might have led it.

So is this trump coup line better than taking two spade finesses?

No!

The likelihood of a club void/singleton with RHO outweighs a specific suit break in spades! The chances of a singleton or void club with RHO is ~8% and this only goes up taking the spade suit break into consideration.

The specific spade suit break we are catering to: Q vs xxxx is around 2.85%.

[I used Richard Pavlicek's suit break calculator, but might have made a mistake]

If we changed the hands and lead, for example:

IMPS None	Dummy ♠ AKJT98 ♥ 65 ♦ KQ2 ♣ A2
	You ♠ 32 ♥ KJ87 ♦ AJ ♣ KQJT9

W	N	E	S
			1NT
P	4Hxfr	P	4S
P	4NT	P	5C
P	6S

You are in 6S, LHO leads the H2 which RHO wins with the A continues a heart.

Now it might be right to play for the trump coup, because LHO might have led a singleton club or RHO might have shifted to a diamond (trying to give partner a ruff looking at a 6+ card D suit).

I haven't done the math though.