You should further inquire as to what that partnership does regarding suit preference signals since technically, unless that law has recently changed, suit preference signals, even from those who play upside down are right side up. Only a few partnerships differ and one of them, very well known, play upside down suit preference signals also, but do not alert them, mainly because, at least at that time, a few years ago, they were not on the list of ACBL alerts.

In any event I, in the absence of any other psychological ploys going on at that table, would just naturally assume that whatever he asked for according to the way they were playing their convention, he instead, had the other (ace of spades as against the king of diamonds) since signalling what the heart holder had would indeed be stupid, but he may be playing against someone who might believe him and so he would take advantage of it.

Of course, that particular signal needs to be known by all opponents of it, but it is still a total guess since it is so ridiculous by every standard of the game to tell the declarer, when your side is on defense, what you have in your hand, especially so when it is the determining factor in the whole hand.

Run clubs and go for the spades. You go down 1 fewer than those who go a losing diamond finesse.
Another plan is to cash the DA just in case the Rabbi’s rule is working.

Hi Steven.

You may want to take that cashing the ace of diamonds back, since if the non-heart hand (West) has the ace of spades he could then sneak an entry into partner’s hand with the still standing king of diamonds, if instead, it still happens to be at large.

Do not fret since you are not the first very good player to make an unsafety play out of an intended safety one.

Hi Bobby

I would expect to go down no matter what I do. I was just hedging my bet so when (if?) Paul reveals the answer that was the plan that worked. At the table you only get one chance, but here in cyberworld I was going for two!

Hello Bobby & Steven,

This is a kind of poker thing – is RHO bluffing with the H10, and really wants declarer to play a spade, or is he telling the truth, and wants a diamond played? RHO has made some effort to judge declarer’s competence, and based his H10 play on his conclusion. His thinking was “Will declarer think my H10 play is true or false?”. Both declarer and RHO are trying to “double-think” what the other is thinking about them.

As it turns out, RHO has the spade ace, and LHO has the diamond king. Could save a lot of thinking by making it a rule that opponents will always false-card in such a situation. Of course, once opponents know that that’s your rule, then they will…………..

My main comment is how you managed to wrong side the contract! 3H from you instead of 3NT is imho a much better bet as it will get the strong hand hidden and, holding as he did Kx in Hearts meant that the long suit was on lead. On any lead declarer will be able to, (at least) drive out the Spade A and make 9 or more comfortable tricks.

Hello Paul,

The bidding you suggest is great, but there was a problem here in that the 2C opener was a “beginning” player with about 50 MPs, and one can only speculate what his action would have been after a 3H call by you. One of the uglier calls by him could be 4C, and that is a road down which you surely don’t want to go. 3NT is indeed not pretty, but sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns!