Get it right…
None vul, you pick up a nice looking 17 hcp hand and your RHO passes it to you.
You play pretty normal 2/1 with 15-17 HCP. Open 1N? With so many controls, ♣ Q in your semi-long suit, ♣ 9, and old wisdom that aces are underrated in 4321 count, you decide that your hand is too good for a simple 1NT opening and decide to promote it 18. West puts in a 1♠ overcall, partner raises to 2♣ and you continue with your original plan and rebid 2NT. Partner raises to 3NT and LHO leads the ♠ J
You can see 8 top tricks in the form of 5 ♣ , 2 ♠ and 1♥ with very little chance of a 9th trick, except ♦ A being rightly placed. Not feeling very optimistic about the contract, you play small from dummy and RHO plays the Queen.
Win or duck?
It seems extremely unlikely that ♦ A would be working for you, especially since you expect your LHO to not make light overcall. Also, while ducking would help in not letting them setup their spades, it doesn’t give you any extra chance for your 9th trick.
On the other hand your LHO doesn’t really know if his partner has singleton or doubleton queen if has only 6 cards. He may decide that you started life with ♠ A9x, in which case he may not continue spades and that might give you an option of endplay.
Winning the Ace seems superior and you decide to do so, cross to club in dummy and play a heart. RHO plays the 5, you cover and LHO wins the 9. Your winning the first spade pays off when after considerable thought he returns a club, RHO following.
You win and run your clubs. Your RHO discards the ♠ 6, ♦ 5 and ♥ 2. LHO discards two spades, you decide to let go a heart and LHO discards the ♦ 5.
Could have postponed the decision by 1 trick, by casing HA first. The appearance of the H card could have given some useful information. If LHO had dropped the HQ for example, it would be better to play him for Q stiff at this stage (no real need for unblocking). If H Jack is not covered, and LHO plays the K, it might be better to play LHO for KQ. But this assuming, opponents were not super experts, out to get you!
They are ALL out to get me :). But very good point. I should cash the HA. At the very least I see one more card. On the table it would probably go J Q A K! I'll sweat a little bit about KT9 with LHo, but should get it right.
If LHO was 6=3=2=2 , would he discard a diamond and not a heart ?
I think the shape should be open book to him by now. If so, it’s not so difficult to see the endplay coming and deciding that your one hope is to make declarer misread the distribution. So yes, I think it’s quite possible for defender to pitch diamond holding 6322. Also, with say KT9 or KQ9 heart, it may look more dangerous to discard heart. Say if I started with ATxx.