Your play?

You are West, the dealer, the bidding goes Pass-Pass-1D(Precision, 2+Ds)-1S;-All Pass

You lead the club ten, and find this layout:

	♠ T8 ♥ KJ82 ♦ J743 ♣ J54
♠ 75 ♥ 965 ♦ KQ52 ♣ T986

The first trick goes T, 4, 7 (upside down attitude), ace. Declarer thinks, then plays the diamond nine. If you play the diamond king or queen (do you?) what do you play next?

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The full layout was:

Dealer W Vul E/W Scoring Imp Lead ♣T	♠ KJ82 ♥ T9 ♦ J743 ♣ J54
♠ 965 ♥ 85 ♦ KQ52 ♣ T986		♠ AQT4 ♥ Q643 ♦ T6 ♣ KQ7
	♠ 73 ♥ AKJ72 ♦ A98 ♣ A32

In the problem I've switched the hearts and spades (and changed slightly dummy's doubleton), so the final hand of the Spingold is not so quickly spotted (the auction was the same, except for a 1H overcall instead of 1S).

At the table declarer won the club ace and exited with the two. Now it was clear for the defense to know what they needed to do - East played the other high club and got out a diamond and the contract finished down 1. Making the contract would have tied the match and forced overtime.

Now GIB shows all lines at trick 2 resulting at down 1, but if declarer plays the diamond nine at trick 2, it is harder on the defense. If West ducks, and declarer lets the nine run to the ten, East will end up later on being endplayed. If West wins the diamond queen or king, and then plays a club, East will later be endplayed: South will win the 2nd diamond with the ace, play a spade to the jack, and East will either have to play hearts or spades, and end up in overtime for the Spingold championship.

Of course a factor here is system (you didn't think this blog would stop talking about bidding, did you?) - the 1D Precision opener, handling all the balanced hands less than 15, makes it hard for declarer to know what to play East for. However there was another key to this hand:

West actually led the club nine, playing coded tens - that is the lead of the ten would show HT9 (e.g. QT9 or KT9) or Tx - the 9 was from 9x or T9x etc. Thus East is marked with club length at trick 1, and will not be long in diamonds.