One man’s inference…

It didn’t take long to find an interesting hand in a match I played today on BBO.  With nobody vulnerable, both pairs arrived in a grand slam in hearts with no opposition bid, on similar auctions. One made it and one went down.  See how you would do.

North ♠ KJ632 ♥ KJ10 ♦ J10 ♣ AJ5

South ♠ A ♥ A986542 ♦ AKQ9 ♣ K

The auctions were almost identical.  West passed and East opened one spade.  South bid hearts East raised hearts and a couple of cuebids and blackwood.  At our table the lead was the spade four dummy played low and East planned the spade nine.  At the other table the club eight was lead, dummy played the club five, east played the club ten and you win the club king.  How do you play hearts?

The only danger is that hearts are 3-0.  So you have to decide if somebody has three hearts who is: Door number 1, East or Door Number 2, West.  You can’t really use the inference that you didn’t get a heart lead.  West is not going to lead a heart from Qxx and he can’t lead a heart if he has the void.  I think there is one other tiny point to consider: West was in first chair and didn’t preempt.  Of course East might preempt over 1♠ but it might be a touch less likely.  Am I grasping at straws?

Is there anything helpful in either lead?  The ♠4 could be from length or from shortness it is pretty hard to tell.   But would West likely lead a spade from the queen after North bid spades.  It does seem a bit strange.  The ♣9 suggest less to me.  It could be from a lot of things given how many clubs are missing (but probably missing the Q and the 10).  Then there are people who like the idea that the queen likes over the jack (more useful when you shuffle manually since people cover the jack with the queen and sometimes the cards don’t get separated during a shuffle).  Or you could play the person you like least for the queen.

These are the things I would think about. (well not so much the last one) Can you come up with others?  Have you made your choice?  Fortunately I didn’t have to.

In this case the queen did not lie over the jack.  It was Door number 1, East who had Qxx.  The whole deal was.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ KJ632 ♥ KJ10 ♦ J10 ♣ AJ5
West ♠ 4 ♥ Q73 ♦ 7654 ♣ 98762		East ♠ Q109875 ♥ — ♦ 832 ♣ Q1043
	South ♠ A ♥ A986542 ♦ AKQ9 ♣ K

And holding the East hand I was thinking about preempting ♠2 and would have in first chair.  So maybe that small inference about West passing had some merit.  What do you think?    By the way I played the ♠ 9 to conceal my spade holding in the hope to avoid helping declarer with a trump decision if he had one.

South was quite disappointed and who could blame him.  “It’s not my day”, he said.